Surfing the Internet Was Coined by a Librarian
A surfer rides waves. The phrase surfing the internet was popularised in 1992 by an American librarian writing about online research.
A surfer rides breaking waves on a board. The digital sense has a documented origin: in 1992 the American librarian Jean Armour Polly published an article called Surfing the INTERNET, and the metaphor spread faster than the technology it described. She chose it partly for a mouse pad showing a surfer, which is a modest beginning for a phrase that defined a decade.
- Someone who rides waves. *A big-wave surfer.*
- Someone browsing online. *Web surfers.*
- Surf — breaking waves. *Heavy surf.*
- Channel surfing — flicking through television channels. *An evening of channel surfing.*
- Couch surfing — staying on friends' sofas. *He couch surfed for a year.*
Word forms
| Form | Word | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Verb | surf | Surf the point break. |
| Past | surfed | They surfed all morning. |
| Agent | surfer | A local surfer. |
| Noun | surf | Loud surf. |
| Compound | surfboard | A short surfboard. |
- Surfers paddled out before dawn.The sport.
- He spent the evening surfing the web.The 1990s metaphor.
- The surf was too rough to swim.The waves themselves.
Metaphors from the 1990s internet
- Surfing — moving quickly from place to place
- Browsing — from grazing animals, taken up by early web software
- Information superhighway — popular then, almost extinct now
- Cyberspace — coined by novelist William Gibson in 1982
- Web — chosen for the tangle of links between documents
*Surf* appears in English in the 1600s, possibly from an Indian word for the coast, and its origin is uncertain. The board sport reached English through accounts of Hawaii; the internet sense dates from 1992.
Who coined surfing the internet?
The phrase was popularised by librarian Jean Armour Polly in a 1992 article, though similar wording appeared slightly earlier in other contexts.
Where does the word surf come from?
It appears in English in the 1600s and its origin is genuinely uncertain. A borrowing from an Indian coastal term is one suggestion.