Tag: slang

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James Harbeck

Yeet Citationality: Yippie-ki-yay!

January 15, 2019 by James Harbeck | 3 Comments on Yeet Citationality: Yippie-ki-yay!

The voting is in, and the American Dialect Society’s Slang Word of the Year is… yeet. Yeet is not so well known to oldsters, but it is in vogue among the youth. Its popularity demonstrates a central fact of how vocabulary spreads. It also leads us to Bugs Bunny, Clark Gable and Judith Butler. People […]

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Wilf Popoff

Wasted Words: Respectable Stoners

February 21, 2017 by Wilf Popoff | 1 Comment on Wasted Words: Respectable Stoners

Legalizing marijuana makes it acceptable, but will it make it respectable? Jumping that second hurdle will be difficult, requiring us to forsake the vast vocabulary it has spawned. I don’t see that happening right away. While I cringe at seeing chief justices, bishops and other bigwigs described as stoners or potheads, if they come out […]

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James Harbeck

Who Let That Word Into the Dictionary? | Linguistics, Frankly

August 18, 2015 by James Harbeck | 1 Comment on Who Let That Word Into the Dictionary? | Linguistics, Frankly

Every so often, Oxford or Merriam-Webster will release a list of words recently added to one of their dictionaries, and many people become grouchy at what they see as awful — or even fake — intrusions that have somehow been bootlegged into the hallowed halls of the official lexicon. You may even agree that they […]

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