The First Meaning of ‘Crush’ Came Long Before a ‘First Crush’
Ah, but those horrid initialisms, naysayers cry—“LOL” and “OMG”—surely a mark of modern laziness, moral decline, and the end of Good English as we know it! Never mind that these naysayers use plenty of initialisms themselves—please RSVP ASAP and BYOB. Or that “OMG” goes back to 1917, when it was first used in a letter to Winston Churchill. What now
... See moreKory Stamper • Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries
Yet the weird truth is that for all their artifactual splendor, dictionaries are starkly misleading portraits of something as endlessly transforming as language. In terms of how words actually exist in time and space, to think of a word’s “genuine” meaning as the one you find upon looking it up is like designating a middle-aged person’s high school
... See moreJohn McWhorter • Words on the Move: Why English Won't - and Can't - Sit Still (Like, Literally)
invert was used to describe men who were attracted to other men and adopted any traditionally feminine habits, thus inverting their gender.
Amelia Possanza • Lesbian Love Story
- Not so long ago, there was a oppressed tribe of people, scattered throughout a larger population, whose very existence was seen as so taboo, so immoral, so illegal, they had to invent their own language to talk with each other, hidden in plain sight. - Because on the other side of that lay the real threat of not just discrimination, but ostraciza... See more
Chi Luu • The Unspeakable Linguistics of Camp - JSTOR Daily
Crushers, the point is, indulge in a funny kind of transference of agency. They appear to prostrate themselves. They gift total power to their crush, invest them with celestial kinds of significance. Your crush, it is tempting to think, could fix you. But in reality, they hoard power. All this wanting exists in their desire. They are unwilling or u... See more
Small Wire • Romance plot
In about the 13th century, we first get “like” in our language and it is a verb. Then around the 15th and 16th centuries, we start to use it in similes. And then around the 16th century, you start using it as a conjunction, where instead of just being between two objects, you’re expressing similarity between an object and a whole sentence: “He rode... See more