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I have often heard people throw around the compliment 'Gosu'. What does this mean and where did it come from?

Example in context: I can't believe that player beat Aardvark, he's so gosu!

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Can you give some context or an example? I can think of a lot of scenarios for that to be used, none of which is exactly a compliment (more just a statement). – Grace Note♦ Mar 3 '11 at 17:29
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why don't you google it first? – Meta Mar 3 '11 at 19:27
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@Meta the goal of this site is to have our own base of knowledge. By posting this question, not only do I get an answer for myself, I also get an answer for anyone else looking now or in the future. In addition, there are probably people on the site who had no idea what Gosu was or ever heard it before. You can't google something if you don't know it exists. They too will benefit from this question being posted. – Aardvark Mar 3 '11 at 20:01
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@Aardvark: The aim of StackOverflow was to be in the first few hits on Google for programming questions. If Gaming.SE has similar goals, then Google is still the focus. You may be right that you can't google something if you don't know it exists, but you won't be able to find this page for the same reason. Besides, "Gosu" has its own Wikipedia page! Are we going to replicate the rest of Wikipedia's gaming information here too? – YellowMegaMan Mar 4 '11 at 10:24
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Voting to close as off-topic due to this meta discussion. – Mana♦ Mar 4 '11 at 17:25
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closed as off topic by galacticninja, Sean, LessPop_MoreFizz, spartacus, kotekzot Sep 21 '12 at 11:25

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1 Answer

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Gosu (고수 also coriander) is a computer gaming term usually used to refer to a person highly skilled in multiplayer games like StarCraft, Warcraft III (RTS/RPG - DotA), Diablo II (RPG), Counter-Strike (FPS) and others. It has a Korean origin and the term was widely adopted by gaming communities

In Korean, Go su (hangul: 고수, hanja: 高手, literally "high hand" in Mandarin) is used for a person with skill, usually in martial arts or in baduk (the game of Go). In the dialect of the Gyeongnam province, gosu also has the meaning of "leader". There are several English backronyms of the Korean word, mostly originating in the StarCraft community, including "Graduate of StarCraft University", "God Of StarCraft Universe" or "God of StarCraft Units".

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gosu

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I would like to have a brief discussion of the origin of this word (which can be found on the wiki mentioned) incorporated into this answer. – KLee1 Mar 3 '11 at 18:34

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