Saved by Alex Burns
Why do we say “like,” like, all the time?
An even more extreme example comes in how English speakers smooth out “I do not know.” We’ve been saying it out loud for generations, long enough for it to have worn down to “I don’t know,” “I dunno,” and even a simple triplet “uh-huh-uh” or “mm-hm-mm” to the low-high-low melody of “I dunno.” “I dunno” is easier to articulate than “I do not know,”
... See moreGretchen McCulloch • Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language
Even without being consciously aware of it, people were aiming to be polite just as soon as they had the typing skills to do so.
Gretchen McCulloch • Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language
Languages are living things. They age and change and grow and shrink. Sometimes we use a word incorrectly on a personal level for years (see me and immergance vs. emergance , gah) and sometimes a whole bunch of people begin “misusing” a word with such frequency that the word acquires that new, misused meaning. See: literally , which was “mis”-used ... See more
Anne Helen Petersen • "I Resonate With That" [NAILS ON CHALKBOARD]
At my own workplaces, the New Age–speak mingled recklessly with aviation metaphors ( holding pattern, the concept of discussing something at the 30,000-foot level), verbs and adjectives shoved into nounhood ( ask, win, fail, refresh, regroup, creative, sync, touchbase ), nouns shoved into verbhood ( whiteboard, bucket ), and a heap of nonwords that
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