Group Selfie Anyone?
English teachers understand that language is dynamic and that it changes and evolves over time. Old words become archaic and fall by the wayside, others are modified.
And people develop their own regional jargon. On a trip to Australia, after I asked for direction from a local in Sydney he replied for a minute or two. I thanked him and we moved on although we had understood only a few words!
People create words when they find nothing suitable in the lexicon. My mother used to talk of the half-season, the first warm days of spring when you encounter people still wearing their winter jackets while others show off in shorts. Very appropriate I always thought.
The English language has over a million words. And the number continues to increase. Many become part of the language landscape gradually, and some of them quickly fall out of usage. Case in point, in 2006 the verb pluto (meaning devalue, as in: I was plutoed when I lost my job) became popular after the planet lost its status, but the word itself seems to have lost its status nowadays.
The Oxford English Dictionary regularly publishes a list of new words to be included in its latest edition. Some of these words may have been in common usage for some time but they thus become formally confirmed. Their official word of the year for 2013 is selfie which we all know means a self-picture, sometimes with one or more people. But the word knows no bound. There is helfie, a picture of one’s hair; belfie, a picture of one’s posterior; shelfie, a picture of one’s books; etc.
Other new words that caught my attention include shvitz, a sauna or steam bath; cyberespionage and cyberspying whose meanings are clear. But there are also some phrasal verbs: gin someone up, which means arouse strong feelings in someone; death glare, a hostile look directed at a particular person; food coma, which refers to the lethargy we have all experienced after eating lots of food. Teenagers seem to favor certain words at certain times. Awesome is now the word which applies to almost anything and anyone. But, let’s not forget that cool is still very much in usage, even as a verb. One day when I asked my granddaughter if a certain top would look good on me, she replied, Try it on and I’ll coolify it. Says it all, don't you think?
Spin has many meanings. While we are all familiar with spin the bottle, being a spin doctor is a latter-day definition which describes what politicians caught in possible career-ending dilemmas become. But the most creative use of a spin can be found on applications for dating services when no-longer-quite-as-young people find all sorts of ways of avoiding terms like chubby or balding, preferring things like warmly hugable. Perfect for a selfie!
