The story
- Korean · borrowed fromㅋㅋㅋ“haha”
- English todaykek
Borrowed from Korean ㅋㅋㅋ (keukeukeu, “haha”, representation of laughter). Since this is often used in StarCraft matches, Blizzard, StarCraft’s developers, decided to reference it in World of Warcraft: when a player of the Horde faction types "lol" using the /say messaging command, members of the opposing faction see it as "kek". Not related to "kik", a typo of "lol".
Words from the same roots
Koreanㅋㅋㅋ all →
geg
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.