"To blog" deciphered

I had a pleasant surprise when opening my e-mail inbox this morning. Being a linguistic freak, I subscribe to a newsletter about Swedish idioms and words and the ethymology behind them. Today's word was "to blog", which surprised me a great deal, as the words are usually a bit old fashioned or rarely used. But perhaps "To blog" files under this category, rarely used, according to the one who compiles the list... ;)

I was glad to see though that the blogger is defined as someone who writes "some sort of journal at a website." and not merely as a diarist. Furthermore, the subscriber to this list is told that "One can see the journal as a middle way between a diary and a column in a newspaper, often with comments about current topics. Thus, the blogger is often a columnist on the net."

The ethymology parts states that the verb "to blog" derives from "blog", coined by Peter Merholz in 1999. The word weblog is somewhat older, as is the phenomenon of writing a diary on the net. Below is the complete text in Swedish, also found here.

Blogga

Den som bloggar skriver ett slags journal på sin
webbplats. Man kan se den som ett mellanting mellan en
dagbok och en kolumn i en dagstidning. Ofta med
kommentarer om dagsaktuella händelser. Bloggaren är
alltså ofta en kåsör på nätet. Det nya verbet blogga är
bildat av ordet blogg, själva webbjournalen. Ursprunget
är det engelska blog, en kortform av weblog som myntades
av Peter Merholz 1999 när han lekte med ordet på sin
webbplats. Blog spreds sedan snabbt, och blev populärt
genom tjänsten Blogger som startade strax därpå. Weblog
har ytterligare några år på nacken, liksom själva
fenomenet att skriva dagbok på nätet.