Newbie
slang term for a novice or newcomer
Newbie is a slang term for a novice, newcomer, or somebody inexperienced in a given profession or activity. In particular, it may refer to a new user of computers, and often concerns Internet activity, such as online gaming or Linux use.
The origin of this term is uncertain. Earliest uses probably date to late twentieth century United States Armed Forces jargon, though possible precursor terms date much earlier. The related term noob (often stylized as n00b) is frequently used in online gaming.
History
The etymology of the term is uncertain. It may derive from "newie", which is attested in U.S. and Australian sources of the 1850s, meaning a neophyte in a place or situation; alternatively, it may derive from the British public school slang "new boy" or "new blood", which is attributed to the same era and was applied to a schoolboy in his first term.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the term "newbie" had a limited usage among U.S. troops in the Vietnam War as a slang term for a new man in a unit.
Another use of the term newbie was the moniker given to new U.S. Navy recruit students attending Basic Electricity and Electronics school by more senior students, a requisite course prior to enrollment in the A-school course at Naval Air Technical Training Center, Millington, Tennessee.
The earliest appearance of the term on the Internet may have been on the Usenet newsgroup talk.bizarre.
The public source identifies “Newbie” as slang term for a novice or newcomer. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Newbie, slang and term.
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This entry incorporates text from “Newbie” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.