Short-arse. Titch. Little Napoleon. There have forever been nasty ways of describing short men. But now there's a nice one: Short King.
And yes, it's a bit irritating and Gen Z, but at least it's positive. So let's learn about it in more detail.
What does Short King mean?
It's a positive way of describing short men. In particular, short men who are happy with their height and generally confident. ‘Short’ being a relative term, but in the UK around 5’9 or less.
Where does Short King come from?
It was made up on social media. Of course. Specifically, by a person called Jaboukie Young-White. Jaboukie is an American comedian. He invented the term on the 4th July 2018, on Twitter. Here is that original post, the stone tablet of the Short Kingdom:
That's one story at least. Most sources (including Wikipedia) say Jaboukie invented it. However, I did find other sources (e.g. Know your Meme) claiming it was two men called Cody Ko and Noel Miller, who posted a video on 26th July 2018, in which they described a video game character as a 'Short King'.
Urban Dictionary also cites them, sort of ignoring the fact that Jaboukie used it three weeks earlier. Perhaps it was like the invention of the lightbulb, dreamt up simultaneously by Thomas Edison and Joseph Swan in their separate labs.
Who knows. The term then went viral as the world (i.e. people on social media) declared the onset of ‘Short King Spring'.
This was a groundswell of public opinion that short men could actually be quite attractive, and lots of women went on the record saying that they would quite happily lower their standards, literally, as shorter men were more fun, especially if they were Tom Holland.
Tom Holland, if you weren't aware, plays one of the Spidermen. He's about 5’7.
The upshot is that the term ‘Short King' has now taken root. Every spring is now ‘Short King Spring’. Forget daffodils, lambs, cleaning - spring is now all about short men. And I might be sounding sarcastic (I am) but isn't that a good thing?
In fact, you can see the exact growth of the term ‘Short King’ on this graph on Google Trends, which shows how many people are googling it. It's going up.
You can also see a graph of the term ‘Short Arse’ on this graph.
It's going down. And isn't that a good thing, too?
Jack, Found of Ruler of London