"Tebowing," the campy Internet meme inspired by lightning rod NFL quarterback Tim Tebow has, like its namesake, refused to fade away quietly. In fact, according to at least one source, Tebowing is now an official part of the English language.
"The rapid rise of the word has seldom been equaled," the Global Language Monitor said in a statement this week that anointed Tebowing as an official word. The official Tebowing.com website defines it as a verb: "To get down on a knee and start praying, even if everyone around you is doing something completely different."
Photos of regular people mimicking Tebow's signature gesture have gone viral online, with Tebowing.com alone receiving more than 15,000 submissions in the past several weeks, according to its founder Jared Kleinstein, who coined the term.
As the newly starting quarterback Tebow continues to lead his Denver Broncos team to improbable comeback victories, the rookie word Tebowing has spawned a small business for Kleinstein and been covered this week by establishment media outlets including the New York Times and Wall Street Journal. It's also sparked a global movement of sorts (please see slideshow, below).
For those unfamiliar with Tebowing or its namesake, Tim Tebow is an unorthodox football player who has simultaneously attracted widespread admiration and ridicule for his relentlessly upbeat personality, irregular throwing motion and fervent Christian faith. Despite a superstar college career, expectations for Tebow's professional career were low until he started his first game of his second season for the Broncos Oct. 23.
Kleinstein, a Denver native and lifelong Broncos fan, watched that game with friends at a Manhattan bar as Tebow led the team to an overtime comeback win. On television, Kleinstein watched Tebow lower himself to one knee and strike a serene, prayerful pose while the players and fans around him went nuts.
Leaving the bar, Kleinstein copied Tebow's pose "to pay tribute" and, as a friend snapped a photo, deemed the act "Tebowing." Later he posted the photo to Facebook and Googled his new word, finding that no one else had previously used it. A couple days later he bought the Tebowing.com domain name for $10.
"I just thought it would be cool to start a site of all our friends doing it different places," Kleinstein told Mashable in an interview.
But, two days later, the site had 350,000 unique visitors. The site has since received submissions from more than 75 countries. By the end of the first week, Kleinstein had been sent photos of people Tebowing in front all of world's major man-made wonders except for one — Machu Picchu. "So I put up a post asking for that," Kleinstein said, "and within the day got three photos from Machu Picchu." The site now incudes more than 2,000 photos in total (story continues after slideshow).
When this fan encountered Tim Tebow in public, the Tebowing circle was complete.
Kleinstein said his site's rapid momentum is "a testament to how our social media works and how quickly things can grow," but also has depth.
"Some see it as humor, but some see it as a way to inspire hope and say that it's okay to pray in public," said Kleinstein, who is Jewish. "It's something you can do without being absurd, without looking like you're even trying to make a fool of yourself or be goofy."
Kleinstein also sells shirts and other apparel through the on-demand clothing service Spreadshirt.com. Within 18 hours of launching he had sold 200 shirts. Spreadshirt executive Mark Venezia told Mashable that his company typically uses about three rolls of orange flex polymer per month to create shirts but had to order 36 to fill last week's orders alone.
As Tebow continues to win on the field — he's now 7-1 as a starter — the Tebowing meme continues rolling strong as well. (In fact, it's not the only Internet trend Tebow has inspired; when he briefly faltered as a player, a negative fill-in-the-blank Tebow-themed meme briefly gained momentum, as well.) Kleinstein has posted less than 15 percent of the submissions he's received, and now has separate tabs for holiday, celebrity, toddler, global and patriotic Tebowing sections. There's even a "Tebowing vs. Tebowing" option, where visitors can choose winners from pairs of dueling photos.
It's that level of widespread acknowledgement that inspired the Global Language Monitor to deem Tebowing an actual word this week, after tracking millions of references from random corners of the Internet and the world's largest media outlets. Chinese search engine Baidu had hundreds of Cantonese references to Tebowing, Paul Payack, the Global Language Monitor's president and "chief word analyst," told Mashable.
"It takes a lot to become a word," Payack said. "But Tebow himself and Tebowing as a phenomenon just keep getting bigger and bigger."
All photos courtesy of Tebowing.com.
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