Words are a mirror of their times.
By looking at the areas in which the vocabulary of a language is expanding fastest in a given period, we can form a fairly accurate impression of the chief preoccupations of society at the time.
~~John Ayto, lexicographer
4 comments:
Okay, a three letter word we don't talk about often enough yet it has created a vocabulary explosion in our current culture.
Yes, well I can think of another word in our current culture, which shocked my mother in law. She meant to say mistake and the word has come to mean something far more explicit. Imagine a 71-year old's embarrassment and jaw dropping at the realization of such a thing. :-0
Well, my first thought was that the most expanding area of our modern language is computer and digital technology. Take the word "blog" for instance. My friends don't send me invitations, they send "evites" and "ecards". I play online Scrabble, and one of the words I wanted to play was PC which is actually in my Webster's dictionary as a word, not an abbreviation!
Amazing, isn't it, how quickly things change. I'm always asking my teens, "What does that mean????
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