Linsanity

Asian basketball sensation Jeremy Lin has launched a new internet craze with his breakout performances for the New York Knicks this season. His rapid rise to prominence has also begun an internet meme based on mixing Lin's name with common words.



Enter the Linsanity. The term was first used as a # on Twitter with no definite origin. The #Linsanity hit its trending peaks on Twitter on February 10th in a game between the New York Knicks and the L.A. Lakers which saw Lin hit 38 points and propel his team to victory. Since then, the #Linsanity has been used to refer to the internet buzz surrounding Lin's meteoric rise, anything from live play by play tweeting during his matches to his consecutive appearances on the cover of Sports Illustrated.

Linsanity is not the only Linspired word floating around the internet. Numerous Lin based puns have made it into media articles and user posts. Here is a list of the top ten Linspired words.

Linsanity is now an official word in the Oxford English dictionary after accruing the requirements of "25,000 citations across the breadth of the English-speaking world, with the requisite depth of usage in books, journals and periodicals, on the Internet, blogosphere, social media, and in the top 75,000 global print and electronic media."

The level of buzz generated by Lin's NBA rise has been unprecedented, and much of that is due to the #Linsanity and the ability of social media to spread the story of a worldwide phenomenon.

Just in case you've been living under a rock, here's the game that launched the Linsanity and made Jeremy Lin a global star.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iWWFk6TX18