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I have checked a few idiom places and general google, but found only usages of this construct, not any explanations.

Is this a silly corruption of "Who's keen", or is there something more interesting going on here?

Does it express anything other than "Who's keen" informally?

P.S. Check out the occurrences on the internet - doesn't really look like "how keen are you", and the first few instances occur in otherwise more or less well spelled contexts. In fact, it looks a bit like how "ask" turns into "axe" with some people...

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  • It makes no sense.
    – Grant Thomas
    Commented Jun 17, 2011 at 9:56
  • Well, probably someone's asking the exact level of "keenness" to do X... but I agree, something's wrong here.
    – Philoto
    Commented Jun 17, 2011 at 10:00
  • This looks like the kind of bastardization you see on message boards and in chat rooms. Simple misspelling on teh Internetz.
    – Robusto
    Commented Jun 17, 2011 at 10:04
  • It sounds like a corruption of "How keen are you to..."
    – Tragicomic
    Commented Jun 17, 2011 at 10:14
  • 3
    Hmmm, to me they sound like honest mistakes and were meant as who's keen (and here it is even corrected by poster).
    – Philoto
    Commented Jun 17, 2011 at 10:48

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Reading the examples from your search link, it appears that it simply a misspelling that isn't getting picked up by spellcheckers. How's is a valid contraction:

How's he doing?

And is an easy enough to explain error with typical English format keyboards. The w is typed with your left hand and the ho is typed with your right. If your right hand jumps the gun, you get how instead of who. This is pure speculation, but it does seem like the uses were simply intended to be who's:

How's keen for a seafood & drinking extravaganza of a weekend!

At this stage I'm going solo so anyone how's keen would be good to meat up, could even meat in tairua as in there all weekend.

And so on.

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  • Some of the cases are probably autocorrect errors. If instead of who you type hwo (swapping a pair of adjacent letters), that might be autocorrected to how instead of who.
    – Stuart F
    Commented Aug 12, 2022 at 11:52

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