Guild Wars 2

For the last couple days, I started paying more attention to the map chat in sPVP lobby. Every now and then, I see something like “Teef OP”, or “How to deal with teefs?”

I asked around what they mean be teef, and it apparently means Thief.

GW2 has a lot of terminologies I’ve never heard of in other MMORPG like Bunkers instead of tank, kittens (I still don’t understand what it means beside the literal juvenile cat), and now Teef.

Where all these words came from?

From teefs themselves.
Teef for lyfe!

I am actually very interested in knowing how Teef came to be, while I am at it, can some one explain to me what “kitten” means?

Blame Zero Day (I think).

Blame the general inability to spell Thief that turned into a trend.

Teef is just people being cute. “Kitten” comes from the censorship on the GW2 Forums. If you type something that is determined to be a swear/curse word, the website will censor that word by replacing it with “Kitten”. Go ahead, try it, you kittening kitten head kitten weed kitten.

I don’t know where “teef” came from but it gives meh teh lawls

I personally hate it when people use stuff like “teef” instead of “thief”. It’s like they either can’t spell it right, or are too lazy to type 5 letters instead of 4.

The only pro of it that I can think of, is that people look “experienced” or “pro” to new players when they use terms new guys don’t know about.

Lets just stick to the original, so everyone knows what we’re talking about..

The word “Thiefs” makes me cringe.

yolo swaggins.2570:

Blame Zero Day (I think).

Blame yolo.

:/ I only ever tried to change “cheese” into “butter”… man that build is so buttery… never caught on . (Oh and STEALTHZORS)

Pretty sure it’s a mocking term for all those that cry “Thief OP!!!!” -> “TEEF OPEEH”

also partially:

MrForz.1953:

Blame the general inability to spell Thief that turned into a trend.

Which is a general characteristic of people that cry, if you look at their posts, they have tons of spelling errors and such.

Could be every well be wrong.

Kittens is censorship being applied to words… like if you use the other word for donkey it will turn up as kitten .
They also pick up if you try to use L337, spaces, dots, and asterisk. Though it seems you can get away with underscores, a_s_s .

Bunkers, not sure… but if I had to guess it would be due to the builds mainly made for holding points in sPvP… you can’t really say you’re “tanking that point” (that’s seems like you’re against it), while saying you’re “bunkering that point”. Like you’re defending on it, and you’re like a bunker that’s meant to withstand hits.

so if i were to say kitten me, it turns into kitten?

edit: lol it does change it.

Honestly “teef” and “teefs” bothers me less than “thiefs.”

“Teef(s)” is just people making a joke where “thiefs” is usually the wrong plural (as opposed to referring to the possessive “thief’s,” with a forgotten apostrophe).

I prefer “Thiff”

i prefer “person who steals secretly or without open force; one guilty of theft or larceny.”

Volrath.1473:

i prefer “person who steals secretly or without open force; one guilty of theft or larceny.”

Yes…
You’re not a thief until you’re caught!

pepper.6179:

so if i were to say kitten me, it turns into kitten?

edit: lol it does change it.

You see… in the world of gw2, we’re not allowed to kitten each other… Babies are made from test-tubes, and bred in Asura labs.

Slightly off topic.
I was looking through my post history, for that “teef thing”…
And I realized, I spawned on these forums out of the hate and frustration when ascended gear first hit. :| heh. ~ still find it the same.
First post on thief forums:

Zero Day.2594:

…

After that it was just because of the constant nerfs….

that explains this weird barcode tattoo.

Zero Day.2594:

Slightly off topic.
I was looking through my post history, for that “teef thing”…
And I realized, I spawned on these forums out of the hate and frustration when ascended gear first hit.

“Teef” existed before that. And I’m pretty sure a lot of people came up with it and they did so because of the pronounciation. I mean, come on – we all say TEEF from time to time.

Im pretty darn sure “teef” was around long before Guild Wars 2.

MightyMicah.7451:

Im pretty darn sure “teef” was around long before Guild Wars 2.

All the versions of the mispelled Thief appeared quickly after the very first MMOs, when the leet language was quite the thing.

MrForz.1953:

MightyMicah.7451:

Im pretty darn sure “teef” was around long before Guild Wars 2.

All the versions of the mispelled Thief appeared quickly after the very first MMOs, when the leet language was quite the thing.

Yes, exactly.

Also to be honest I think part of where “teef” came from is simply the fact that many who speak English as their secondary language tend to pronounce it “teef” simply due to accent or whatever

MightyMicah.7451:

Also to be honest I think part of where “teef” came from is simply the fact that many who speak English as their secondary language tend to pronounce it “teef” simply due to accent or whatever

I have been told that my “Teef for lyfe” sounds just like some native english speakers would say it. I’m perfectly capable of pronouncing “Thief” right =)

I prefer thief, thief’s, and thieves.

There’s nothing “cute” about illiteracy, or the inability to type a word properly.

Kurow.3076:

I prefer thief, thief’s, and thieves.

There’s nothing “cute” about illiteracy, or the inability to type a word properly.

Let me guess, your main isn’t a thief, right?
Most thieves have got humor.

Jana.6831:

Kurow.3076:

I prefer thief, thief’s, and thieves.

There’s nothing “cute” about illiteracy, or the inability to type a word properly.

Let me guess, your main isn’t a thief, right?
Most thieves have got humor.

Never knew I needed to main a thief to find illiteracy, and inability to type, “cute”.

Jana.6831:

Zero Day.2594:

Slightly off topic.
I was looking through my post history, for that “teef thing”…
And I realized, I spawned on these forums out of the hate and frustration when ascended gear first hit.

“Teef” existed before that. And I’m pretty sure a lot of people came up with it and they did so because of the pronounciation. I mean, come on – we all say TEEF from time to time.

Oh yeah teef definitely existed prior to gw2 (it’s on urban dictionary… added in 2005).

I wasn’t saying that I made it up, I meant, I (me) appeared out of hate and frustration…

Within these forums, pretty sure yolo first started saying it.

Teef comes from French Canadians attempting to pronounce “Thief” to no avail… the result is “Teef”.

You’re welcome.

(Same result from other accents)

Jana.6831:

MightyMicah.7451:

Also to be honest I think part of where “teef” came from is simply the fact that many who speak English as their secondary language tend to pronounce it “teef” simply due to accent or whatever

I have been told that my “Teef for lyfe” sounds just like some native english speakers would say it. I’m perfectly capable of pronouncing “Thief” right =)

I didn’t mean to imply anyone was incapable of pronouncing it correctly. But due to accent, it’s often pronounced differently. I, myself, even as a native English speaker, often pronounce words differently than others.

people would say “help! a teef stole my purse!”

‘Teef’ is what happened after a thief steals the ‘h’ and the rest of the letters just sort of fall together without h’s strong moral compass.

Kurow.3076:

Never knew I needed to main a thief to find illiteracy, and inability to type, “cute”.

No, but it’s extremely fussy to complain about this – I usually like thieves because we think alike so I’m a bit astonished that there are people in this forum who complain about stuff like this.

Zero Day.2594:

Oh yeah teef definitely existed prior to gw2 (it’s on urban dictionary… added in 2005).
I wasn’t saying that I made it up, I meant, I (me) appeared out of hate and frustration…
Within these forums, pretty sure yolo first started saying it.

That wasn’t meant this way, I wasn’t accusing you of claiming the copyright, I’m just generally baffled why this is even a thread. I knew a guy who we all called “Keef” (his name is Keith), so.. “Teef” is nothing special or nothing to argue about – at least in my opinion.

MightyMicah.7451:

I didn’t mean to imply anyone was incapable of pronouncing it correctly. But due to accent, it’s often pronounced differently. I, myself, even as a native English speaker, often pronounce words differently than others.

Sure, there are a lot of people who have English as their native language and they all sound differently. But sometimes I pronounce words in my native language differently as well, depending on my mood.

I think other covered “teef” and “kitten” but the term “bunker” rather than “tank” comes from GW2s combat mechanics.

“tank” usually connotates an expectation of aggro management in a trinity style system, and GW2 “tanks” don’t have that kind of a skill subset.

In addition, the primary PvP modes in which “tanking” is viable all involve point capturing or area denial by remaining in a fixed position.

Thus, the “bunker” terminology comes from a combination of a lack of aggro for PvE (bunker/tank setups are not favored, so the “tank” teminology never reall caught on) and their literaly function in PvP (They are fortified positions designed to hold an area)

Thus, when the PvP community started calling certain builds bunkers, the subset of the PvE community that was playing those builds picked up the terminology already in use when discussing them, and the term “bunker” spread to PvE.

Did somebody say my name?

The 1st iteration i saw was from the Ebay forums where someone was making fun of the non NA players on SoS.

Snakebyte.2804:

I prefer “Thiff”

Lol this comment.

theeves everywhere

Funnily enough, that word if said with an accent is quite vulgar in a local language….

Jana.6831:

Zero Day.2594:

Oh yeah teef definitely existed prior to gw2 (it’s on urban dictionary… added in 2005).
I wasn’t saying that I made it up, I meant, I (me) appeared out of hate and frustration…
Within these forums, pretty sure yolo first started saying it.

That wasn’t meant this way, I wasn’t accusing you of claiming the copyright, I’m just generally baffled why this is even a thread. I knew a guy who we all called “Keef” (his name is Keith), so.. “Teef” is nothing special or nothing to argue about – at least in my opinion.

I guess it’s kind of cool to know where words originated from… like the term mouse that we use to refer to our computer mice… came from the guys that made the oN-Line System. They did a demo that’s known as “The mother of all demos” and in one of the parts the guy presenting the system apologizes for calling it a mouse and doesn’t even know why they started to call it so – the only neat part about the whole demo.

I can imagine that a lot of people brought it up, because "That stupid “teef” killed me!!" "Hahaha, you said “teef”!" – another story with a computer mouse as not many of us could’ve invented it. And well – it does look like a mouse.

It’s a bunch of weeabo bullkitten, that’s what “teef” is.