Word Revolution, Part 2: YOU

word web

You wordsmiths, you!  Thanks so much for reading last month’s blog and jumping in with your own suggestions.  I was thrilled with the words you posted – and dismayed at not having thought of them myself!  In an attempt to rectify the latter, I hereby revisit the word revolution issue.  Just to refresh your memory, last month I listed words that have taken on new and previously unimagined meanings.  This month, it’s your turn.  I may be organizing them in a blog, but these evolved words all came from you.

TWEET.  Of course.  Not a bird, but a 140-character message posted on one arm of … wait for it … SOCIAL MEDIA.  Would we have guessed what that term meant twenty years ago?  But who doesn’t know it now?

SWIPE.  Used to be, we used that word to describe brushing past a person or car, as in side-swiped.  Now it’s brushing a finger left or right to move through mobile apps.

WINDOWS means more than the glass we look through to see outside or in, and CLOUD goes way beyond those white things we see in the sky.

A MOUSE doesn’t necessarily eat cheese.  To SURF does not require a board.  CODE is far, far, far more complex than four secret digits you punch in to unlock a house, car, or alarm.  A CELL is no longer just something for bad guys.  And TEXT has meaning well beyond a passage in a book.

Sadly, COKE isn’t something you necessarily drink.  DISH, as a verb, can mean gossip.  Fishing is often spelled PHISHING.  SHIP, the verb, can mean something entirely different from sending something to someone, but even after researching the urban slang meaning of that one, I don’t get it.

FACETIME I get.  I do it all the time with my grandkids.  I also get BAD meaning good and WICKED meaning awesome.

I could mention new intonations we use when drawling, “Seriously,” “Ya think?” and “Really,” but that’s getting off point – which is that words keep changing.  I wonder what’s coming next.  If you were to speculate, what would you say?

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  1. Eileen Keane on December 18, 2016 at 3:12 pm

    Gay-used to mean happy, now a synonym for homosexual.

    Sick- was ill, now means something is amazing.

    Tool-an implement for work, now a not very intelligent person.

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