v. To have many celebrities in attendance; to send a picture of a celebrity whose name is a rhyming slang code word; to use one's celebrity status to promote a product or cause.
2003
In the U.K., "celebing" has taken off as a sort of slang messaging. Instead of sending someone the message "Fancy a beer?" on their wireless phone or — heaven forbid — calling and asking, people are sending pictures of Britney Spears. When they're hungry, they send a photo of Hank Marvin.
2003
TOM JONES ''He's brilliant. We had our annual Man of the Year party at the Opera House in London's Covent Garden about three years ago. He turned up at the after show party. It was really celebed up. There was designer Tom Ford and Paul McCartney, lots of people, a brilliant evening.
1992 (earliest)
The Paddy Ashdown campaign will, by contrast, be overwhelmingly political in content and style. With comedian John Cleese as the only big name from the entertainment business, the Liberal Democrat leader is falling back on using his candidates to give some clout. But there is still plenty of argument whether 'celebing' makes that much difference to voting intentions.
The word celebrity has been a naturalized citizen of the English language for about 400 years. (It emigrated from Latin via French.) It originally meant "the state of being famous or much talked about." The "famous person" sense didn't appear until the middle of the 19th century, and then the short form celeb entered the language in the early 1900s. Now, as nouns are wont to do, celeb has sprouted a verb offshoot on which a number of senses have bloomed in a short time.
The second sense may be a bit mysterious to anyone not familiar with Cockney rhyming slang, where objects or actions are represented by words or phrases that rhyme with the names of those objects or actions. For example, stairs are "apples and pears" (or perhaps "dancing bears"); road is "frog and toad"; and queer is "ginger beer." Many of the slang terms are celebrity names: trouble is "Barney Rubble"; pain is "Frasier Crane" (or "Shania Twain"); and belch is "Raquel Welch." So celebing, in the second sense, means sending someone a picture of the celebrity who name is used as a rhyming slang term.
The second sense may be a bit mysterious to anyone not familiar with Cockney rhyming slang, where objects or actions are represented by words or phrases that rhyme with the names of those objects or actions. For example, stairs are "apples and pears" (or perhaps "dancing bears"); road is "frog and toad"; and queer is "ginger beer." Many of the slang terms are celebrity names: trouble is "Barney Rubble"; pain is "Frasier Crane" (or "Shania Twain"); and belch is "Raquel Welch." So celebing, in the second sense, means sending someone a picture of the celebrity who name is used as a rhyming slang term.