Mosh-up, Mash-up, Mesh-up, Mish-up, Mush-up

March 21, 2007 9:36 AM

In this NYT article about the new This American Life TV show, the writer uses the term "mosh-up". It seems to be synonymous with how I think of "mash-up". Is this an invention of the writer? Is it just a play on "mash-up"? Is one term older than the other?

I didn't see much on the Google referencing "mosh-up", "mash-up" is unsurprisingly better documented.

posted by These Premises Are Alarmed to Writing & Language (8 answers total)

I think it's a mistake. Like Bush saying "the Google." Should be mash-up.
posted by mattbucher at 10:10 AM on March 21, 2007

Seconding it being a mistake.
posted by xammerboy at 11:03 AM on March 21, 2007

Mistake. I think that writer just doesn't run into the word mash-up a lot, which seems a little odd for somebody who writes about media. You KIDS with your mosh-ups and your mash pits...
posted by sparrows at 11:46 AM on March 21, 2007

He used mash-up in a May, 2005 article for the Times, so it could be a typo. But I think he used "mosh up" to symbolize the way the formats were thrown together, a la a mosh pit. He mashed-up mosh and mash-up, essentially. Try to say that 3 times fast.
posted by cashman at 12:13 PM on March 21, 2007

I'd guess he melded "mash-up" and "mishmosh" into one by accident.
posted by divka at 12:13 PM on March 21, 2007

I agree with Cashman's hypothesis WRT mosh.
posted by misterbrandt at 12:19 PM on March 21, 2007

Response by poster: (By the way, intentional or not I think "mosh-up" is great imagery - obviously since I bothered to Ask Metafilter about it. I was mostly wondering if this was a new coinage.)
posted by These Premises Are Alarmed at 12:24 PM on March 21, 2007

My guess is that it's simply a typo. The "a" key is right next to the "o" key on a Dvorak keyboard, and a spelling checker won't catch "mosh-up" because "mosh" is a word. Of course, I can't be sure the writer is a Dvorak typist, but the proximity of all the vowels is one of the layout's few pitfalls.
posted by kindall at 4:27 PM on March 21, 2007