It’s my responsibility, despite my very advanced age and despite the linguistic distractions from war crimes abroad and political meltdown at home, to try to keep track of the latest slang. For some time Gen Z, the population group born between 1997 and 2010, has been torchbearer for the zeitgeist, via TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, promoting such novelties as influencer-talk and its accelerated succession of fads and looks known as aesthetics or vibes (search this site with those keywords for more on all of these).
Now, in early May, help arrives in the form of a diatribe by 21 year-old LA-based singer-songwriter Allegra Miles, calling out aging millennials for their use of dated terminology and urging them to update themselves with Gen Z’s newest catchphrases and slogans. Allegra’s translations attracted the attention of the mainstream media in Australia and the UK and you can read them here…
But Allegra’s generation are no longer the youngest on the block, and I’m curious as to how Gen Alpha – those born between 2010 and 2024 – will modify existing language and generate their own novelties. Tiktok influencer Nicole Pellegrino comments here…
Unfortunately, attempts by parents and teachers to get to grips with their students’ new ways of expressing themselves are embarrassingly inept, if well-meaning. Witness this glossary of terms, one of several ‘guides’ published this year, that is actually a ragbag of well-worn language items favoured by younger millennials and Gen Z…
I’ll continue, from my distant vantage point, to investigate, but my post is, then, an appeal, to any members of Gen Alpha (or their siblings, classmates, neighbours) who bother with online blogs or antique social media platforms, to send me samples of their favourite expressions. I’ll add these to my databases and write about them in due course.
In fairness, I should also list one of several similar articles published recently, again by the Daily Mail in this case, but whose source (the Curry’s electronic retail group) is perhaps not exactly representative of the age-group it describes…
Once a ‘heathen’ token of fertility and (re)birth (or so we are told – speculations by the Venerable Bede in the 8th century or Jacob Grimm in the 19th, now taken as gospel, may indeed be no more than speculation) appropriated by Christianity as a symbol of resurrection, nothing could be more familiar than an egg at Easter-time. More obscure are the early history of egg-giving and the very ancient origins of the word itself…
Long ago it was a custom in northern England and Scotland to give decorated hardboiled eggs as presents for Easter, just as folk still do in Catholic and Orthodox Europe and elsewhere. These little gifts, typically hand-painted in vivid colours, were known variously as ‘paste-eggs’, ‘pace-eggs’ or ‘past-eggs’, the first component being a corruption of Latin paschalis, relating to Passover or Easter, rendered in earlier Englishes by the adjectives ‘paschal’ or ‘pasch’. The terms might alternatively have been borrowed from just across the channel, perhaps from Dutch paasche eyren or Frisian peaske aaien. Dyeing or painting eggs, however, is a custom that predates ‘western’ or Christian practice. Very ancient traditions from many parts of the world involve the communal decoration of eggs at different times of the year, in Persia for example at the Nowruz (‘new day’) festival, marking the spring equinox and celebrated for the last two thousand years.
Old Easter traditions, some true, some perhaps true and many almost certainly embellished (pun intended), were described by John Brand in his Popular Antiquity of 1841:
The first reference specifically to ‘Easter eggs’ is by John Knox in his 1572 History of the Reformation in Scotland. This tells of ‘gifts’ bestowed in a very different sense, when in Edinburgh a Catholic priest was captured and tormented: ‘Himself fast tyed to the said Crosse, where he tarried the space of one hour; During which time, the boyes served him [i.e pelted him] with his Easter egges.’
We can perfectly understand the word Knox uses, but students of the history of the English language will be familiar with another anecdote, recounted by the printer William Caxton in his Eneydos (a translation of Virgil’s Aeneids) of 1490. He described a group of northern English merchants en route to Holland whose ship was becalmed on the Thames. One of them went ashore to buy a meal from a local woman: ‘And specially he aksyed after eggys. And the good wyf answerde that she coude speke no frenshe. And the marchaunt was angry for he also coude speke no frenshe but wold haue hadde egges and she understood hym not. And thenne at laste a nother sayd that he wolde haue ‘eyren’. Then the good wyf sayd that she understood hym well.’
Northern English dialect had adopted the word egges from Old Norse, while southern and eastern dialects used Old English eyren. Both are descendants of the Proto-Germanic *ajją which itself comes from Proto-IndoEuropean*h₂ōwyóm. This may be formed from a root-word for bird,*awi-, so settling once and for all the question of which came first. It is of course also the ancestor of Latin ovum and its derivations in Italian (uovo), Spanish (huevo) and French (oeuf) as well as in Greek ōión, Old Church Slavonic aja, Russian jajco, Breton ui and Welsh wy. Our modern egg is cognate with modern Icelandic and Norwegian egg, Swedish ägg and Danish æg. Modern German ei is closer to the Old English version.
Amusingly, there have been folk etymologies (that is, fake etymologies) for egg put forward by mischievous or deluded ‘experts’ in the past. One silly claim is that our word is related to ‘ego’ – and that this is somehow a theory endorsed by Sigmund Freud. The dramatist John Lyly in his Galatea comedy of 1588 plays with the notion that eggs are enticingly golden in colour and are ‘tried in the fire’ just like gold, for which they could be a symbol or synonym. Like gold, too, they are incentives ‘to frolic’ as they ‘are a thing that doth egg on’.
That jaunty phrase to ‘egg someone on’ (first attested in1566) in the sense of urging someone to do something, especially something risky or offensive, in fact has a different history, deriving from the Middle English verb eggen, from Old Norse eggja (to incite). The base is again a noun, egg, but this time meaning the edge, of, for example a blade or a cliff, from Proto-Germanic *agjō, from Proto-IndoEuropean *h₂eḱ- (sharp, pointed), so the goading or provoking here involves pushing someone nearer or over a boundary (though some think it’s pushing with the figurative or literal edge of a sword). Lexicographers all insist that the expression ‘over-egg the pudding’ comes from this sense, supposedly referring to excessive mixing or beating, rather than – more logically – from the idea of adding too many eggs to the mixture and ruining its texture.
In the 18th and 19th centuries darning eggs (made of stone or wood and used to fill out a garment being mended) and egg-shaped trinket or needle boxes for adults became popular; the egg-shaped toy containers which were given to children at Easter were usually made of tin, sometimes of cardboard covered with velvet and satin, and filled with miniature gifts or sweets. The first chocolate Easter eggs were created in France and Germany in the early 19th century and were solid, as the technology required for hollow shells was not yet in place. The first (dark) chocolate egg produced in the UK was sold by J.S Fry of Bristol in 1873: John Cadbury followed in 1875 and by 1905 was mass-producing hollow milk chocolate eggs, often filled with sugared almonds. In a reversal in 2017 The Solid Chocolate Company boasted – erroneously – that they had produced the world’s very first solid (Belgian) chocolate egg, weighing 750gm and retailing at £24.99.
For more European translations of ‘egg’ and their etymologies:
I have written several times on this site about new language and novel forms of expression generated by Generation Z and about how evolving attitudes, fashions and social behaviour among younger cohorts translate into a multimodal mix of verbal and visual on platforms such as TikTok. I have argued that older generations should not ignore or deride the unfamiliar and often baffling messaging practised by ‘the youth’, but try to understand and engage with it. During the slow, fraught, trying first weeks of 2024 the UK’s mainstream media has for the first time begun to pay some attention to the new language appearing online and on the street.
Earlier in the month my friend, Financial Times journalist Emma Jacobs, wrote about intergenerational language differences and resulting misunderstandings in the workplace. Her article, which quotes me, is here…
Dr Christian Ilbury, quoted in that article, added this caveat subsequently: “it’s just HRTs + memetic discourse styles which keep the audience engaged (linked to platform capitalism) not a *new accent*”. Christian had previously helped to explain the latest incarnations of the once taboo c-word…
In distressing contrast, the news cycle has been dominated throughout the month of January, in fact since October last year, by far less frivolous concerns. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a very different way has generated language (‘administrative detention’, ‘the other team’, ‘educide’, ‘nakba 2’) – or recycled older terminology (‘ethnic cleansing’, ‘demilitarization’, ‘collateral’) – which is controversial and which demands analysis. While recording the language of Donald Trump, of Brexit and of the Covid pandemic, and once again, while tracking the atrocities taking place today, I have been conscious of distortion, untruths, avoidance and manipulations practised both by the participants in the conflict, by their allies or sponsors, and by those who should be reporting on it objectively and, where possible, impartially. It is by scrutinising their language and treating public and media discourse critically, by exposing bad faith and countering falsehood that linguists can make some small contribution to the global conversation taking place.
Linguists have begun to discuss the ways in which facts and opinions are being presented to the public and to unpack the assumptions and covert intentions of those controlling, or attempting to control the narratives in question…
For my part I am collecting new examples of contentious language relating to the middle eastern crises and adding them to my existing glossary of weaponised words and toxic terminology on this website. I would be very grateful for contributions from readers and will acknowledge these in upcoming posts.
During October I relished the chance to talk to the editors of DazedDigital, Serena Smith and Gunseli Yalcinkaya, and they told me about the most recent developments in online and digital communication and the new language varieties trending on social media. I have tried to make sense of a much younger generation’s performances and interactions and the notes I made follow here…
Language and the way we use it is now for the first time truly globalised. This means for example that new accents and intonations and vocal affectations take place across several cultures almost simultaneously. This gives us pronunciation and intonation novelties like Youtuber or Influencer accent, TikTok voice, etc. These are fluid, evolving and can blend more than one traditional source (UK and US linguistic styles and usages for example). The phenomenon is not new – the mid-Atlantic accent dates back many decades and both Valley Girls and users of Multiethnic London English – MLE – have played with new ways of pronouncing, but the platforms and apps of the 2020s – TikTok in particular – highlight these…
Obviously the way we consume and exploit media has changed radically with the internet and mobile technology and determines the kinds of messages we exchange and the words, sounds and visuals we actually use. Short attention-spans mean that messages need to be accelerated, brief and telling: the constraints of apps and platforms make for compressed and dense information packages. At the same time the imperative for innovation (something that has always been part of language evolution, but used to happen very gradually) – novelty, neologisms, new and more liberated attitudes to formality and informality and style in general – is integral to changing fashions, aesthetics, vibes. Even such basics as whether messages have to make sense have been destabilised by Gen Z‘s playful surrealism and absurdism and TikTok’s creative conventions.
One major change is the way that the distinction between written and spoken language has broken down since people began to type conversations and exchange rapid interactions electronically. Also Pre-existing words and expressions are hijacked, reversed, toxified, appropriated and modified as never before. And we all now have the power to do this via electronic media – we don’t need permission to publish and exchange our ideas and indulge our playful, mischievous or creative new usages.
Gunceli asked, There are so many memes joking about how we’ve ‘progressed past the need for language’. Obviously worth taking with a pinch of salt, but do you think there’s any truth to this?
We won’t evolve ‘beyond language’ since language is simply a label for human interaction and communicative practices, but the specifics of that language will continue to adapt and mutate along with our social needs and our technologies. Linguists do talk increasingly in terms of multimodality whereby both online and offline communication involves much more than speech or writing – ‘language’ as we have known it. The buzzword multimodality can refer to how IRL we blend all sorts of semiotics often simultaneously: stance and posture, facial expression, gesture, writing, speaking and using a communication device, but also refers to how online and app messages employ abbreviations, acronyms, audio, video, symbols, memes as well as or instead of words (…soon probably touch and smell as well!)
The NPC streamers phenomenon highlighted by Dazed is another example of what I described as GenZ and TikTokers’ minimalist, surrealist or absurdist treatment of language. NPC stands for ‘non-playable character(s)’, the digital background entities with a limited repertoire of utterances and repetitive actions encountered in video games, and the streaming is an online activity, primarily on the TikTok platform, whereby creators imitate these characters by livestreaming themselves, and viewers reward them with in-app gifts for doing it.
The new primacy of image (and audio) over simply text and conversation has resulted in a human imitation of cartoon sounds and seemingly meaningless bits of language that only followers and enthusiasts will recognise and be positively triggered by. Playing with identities by way of words, slogans, soundbites and catchphrases is as much influenced by the poses of cosplayers or Furries and the behaviour of video-gamers as it is by ‘traditional’ ways of using verbal and visual language.
How do you think the mainstreaming of emerging tech like AI is changing the way we communicate verbally with one another?
Algorithms being used for automated reasoning and the generating of persuasive messaging or content are already operating at sophisticated levels, but the linguistic aspect is just as much prey to error and detectable failures as, for example, deepfake images and impersonations of artistic productions. If we are digitally literate and managing to keep up, we can often see through the deception, and this is probably reassuring. AI has some interesting potential: for example, to allow us to communicate with people whose language we don’t share. But I think the limitations of AI(-its difficulties in interpreting or reproducing human nuance, implication, indirectness, etc) will lead to – is already leading to – new forms of incoherence and misunderstanding. I suspect we will soon be able to recognise a particular ‘AI style’ so that artificially generated messages can be recognised as such in some cases – at least I hope so! Translators and teachers are already grappling with potential of AI to assist, supplement or replace their work – and its limitations in doing so. More alarmingly AI is already inventing and using languages that we humans can’t understand: https://www.fastcompany.com/90132632/ai-is-inventing-its-own-perfect-languages-should-we-let-it
Gunceli’s fascinating review of all these themes and more is here…
Serena Smith spoke to me about the latest version of familect, the intimate, informal, often comical language invented in private domestic spaces, about which I’ve written before on this site. Her excellent account of TikTok’s #MarriageLanguage is here…
Twitter – a space I value greatly and make use of to keep abreast of cultural, social, political controversies, to exchange facetious remarks and gossip, and, above all, to keep in touch with linguists, writers, influencers, anonymous wits across the virtual globe, has of course been a-buzz with the news that its owner, would-be tech-bro, multi-billionaire Elon Musk, has rebranded the platform as ‘X’.
In ‘linguistic’ terms the X sign is already overburdened with signification – in other words it has an ‘excess’ of potential meanings, so is a very odd choice for a brand in that many of those meanings have negative connotations or connotations of absence, erasure, taboo, cancellation, prohibition, etc, etc. Among the only well-known positive ones are kisses, the marking of the spot on a treasure map and the Christian chi-ro symbol ( ⳩).
Although it can evoke mystery or anonymity, the many meanings of ‘X’ veer strongly towards the antipathetic: the cancellation mark, X-rated, unknown values, in superstition and mysticism death, danger, endings. In branding(!), as it depicts a generic version of the product being promoted—as in “Brand X”—the unidentified product deprecated as inferior to the named brand; it can serve like the asterix in replacing key letters in taboo words, in demographics Generation X is the ill-defined, cohort, adrift and stranded between boomers and millennials. It can suggest the scene of the crime, the sniper’s crosshairs, if multiplied it can describe the strength of strong liquor or moonshine, it can imitate crossed fingers or a puckered or defiant closed mouth. All these and more potential senses of the sign make it both risky and confusing as a solo identifier. Musk’s declared notion that the sign will also remind us of our ‘imperfections’ is putting it very mildly indeed (and who wishes to be reminded of their imperfections every time they log on?). Geeks, nerds, ‘edgelords’ and tech-bros (and nepo-/man-babies too), as we have seen in the case of other dominant brands, have their own , touchingly ingenuous ideas of what is mysterious, evocative, triggering or inspiring. They also have the means to inflict these insights on the wider, often more engaged, more discerning online community…
I spoke to Clare Thorp of BBC Culture about the linguistic implications of the rebranding and Clare’s article is here…
The reaction of the World Wildlife Fund: the German text reads ‘Protect our wildlife before it is too late’
The reactions to the imposition of the new symbol by tweeters/tweeple/the twitterati (what should we call them now?), at least those who inhabit my corner of the platform, has been overwhelmingly negative, hostile and dismissive. Just a very few tech-bros, would-be influencers, crypto-enthusiasts have sympathised with Musk’s declared attempt to re-present the site as a multi-purpose, multimodal platform including new facilities such as banking, investment, dating(?). I have put together a checklist of articles commenting on all aspects of the venture, focusing especially on the symbolism and semiotics of the X itself. A small selection is here..
On 30 July came news of a tagline or slogan designed to accompany ex-Twitter’s new visual identity. The phrase being promoted is ‘Blaze Your Glory’. @SmoothDunk’s response to this was a visual one:
…Other users of the site are fighting back, finding ways to delete or mask the ‘X’ trademark and restore their cherished bird symbol:
I talked to Jim Mora at Radio New Zealand on the same subject on August 4th:
…And, as if to confirm my misgivings about the choice of letter, the Guardian reported on August 8th: ‘Ministers have opened a new vaccine research centre in the UK where scientists will work on preparing for “disease X”, the next potential pandemic pathogen.’
I thought it might be interesting, even informative, to look back from our post-Brexit, post-COVID vantage point in early 2023 to a time before a culture of impunity had become embedded, a time when there still seemed to be a consensus across political persuasions that competence was a first requirement of whoever was elected to govern Britain, (but a time, too, in which there was a feeling among many that profound changes were overdue). In 1997 I made a series of programmes for BBC World Service Radio, looking at how emerging words and phrases seemed to embody novel attitudes on the part of the British. The broadcasts were aimed at listeners outside the UK, although at that time also accessible inside the territory.
The first in a series of short programmes looked at the language of New Labour, at perceptions of a closer relationship between its politicians and what is now called the mainstream media and at the role of the spin doctors (one of the very new formulations heard in those days) responsible for what is now called comms and messaging and for negotiating that rapprochement.
I was fortunate to be able to draw upon insights from Derek Draper, at that time one of New Labour’s highest placed political advisors and lobbyists, journalist and columnist Julia Hobsbawm and writer and critic Peter Bradshaw. Our conclusions were at that time revealing, I think, even if now the notions and the behaviour we were looking at and the terminology that accompanied them have become commonplace.
These recordings were lost for many years, and I am very grateful, both to my then-producer Colin Babb for recovering some of them, and to Urban Mrak who has managed to restore and re-record a small selection of the damaged tapes. The first of them can be accessed here, although the first few seconds during which we listened in the studio to reiterations of the ‘New Labour, New Britain’ mantra are missing…
In the following days I will add two more of these short recordings, dealing, respectively, with the idea that late-90s Britain was experiencing an upsurge in aggressive, selfish behaviour, typified by the new concept of ‘road rage‘, and an increase in female assertiveness caricatured as ‘girl power‘.
A research portal for scholars, the press and the public
The Slang and New Language Archive was created in 1994 while I was Director of the Language Centre at King’s College London. The archive, consisting of a small library of books and periodicals and a number of databases and sub-directories, was designed as a repository for the collection, storage and dissemination of new language, in particular examples of nonstandard varieties of English such as slang, jargon and buzzwords. The archive was later expanded to take in examples of media language, political language, linguistic curiosities and etymologies. It remains a resource, unique in the UK and not-for-profit, assisting researchers, students, teachers and journalists, as well as non-specialists, in accessing information about aspects of contemporary language that are under-represented in traditional dictionaries and reference works.
This link will take you to the Archive webpage at King’s College, where there are further links to relevant articles and published sources…
Glossaries from the archive may be accessed on this site by entering keywords, such as slang, jargon, MLE (Multiethnic London English), familect (highly colloquial language used in the home), coronaspeak (language related to the COVID-19 pandemic) and weaponised words (the contentious language of Brexit and populism) and slurs (racist and misogynist terms) in the search box. Once you have accessed a post of interest, check the tags and categories at the foot of the page for other articles or glossaries on the same topic.
Two of the larger archive datafiles are hosted on Aston University’s Institute of Forensic Linguistics Databank site. These are a glossary of current youth slang…
Please note that the King’s archive focuses principally on contemporary language, that is terms used from the twentieth century to the present day. If you are interested in historical slang, I strongly recommend the monumental work by my associate, the British lexicographer Jonathon Green. His dictionary, now generously freely available online, lists current and historical slang terms with timelines and citations illustrating their usage and development…
For more information, for queries, or to donate examples of language, contact me via this website or via the King’s College webpage. I’m on Twitter as @tonythorne007 too.
We are halfway through January now. The Holibobs are over and we have come to the end of Chrimbo Limbo – that uncertain period between Christmas and New Year. Dishy Rishi is still in number 10 and, despite unprecedented crises in the health services (though the Panny-D seems to have subsided and Locky-D is just a memory) and family finances (in meltdown due to the Cozzi-Liv), we will have to wait until next year for a Genny-Lec (and perhaps the predicted Labby-Maj once the votes have been counted).In the midst of adversity, on social media (on Facey-B, Insta-G, and even Linky-D) the usual barrage of banter, badinage and bonhomie continues unabated nevertheless. As my Twitter friend Amanda comments…
‘Platty Joobs’ (for Platinum Jubilee in case you missed it) and ‘famalam’ have a Professor Stanley Unwin feel, for me and possibly others of my advanced years. Unwin was an eccentric old chap who used to perform monologues on the radio in the 1950s in which he mangled words and phrases and challenged listeners to interpret what he was saying. ‘Unwinese’ added nonsense syllables, reversed syllables, jumbled parts of sentences – like children’s nonsense stories and nursery and baby talk does. Exaltation of childhood by way of whimsy and nonsense (as in the works of Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear) has been an enduring feature of Britishliterary and popular culture – perhaps a tactic by which we try to play down the dark side of life, smooth over social inequalities and make light of the blunders of our ruling class: deploying non-stop facetiousness, irony, cheek and irreverence in all everyday communications.
I spoke to Serena Smith, editor at Dazed Digital, about the sassy, cutesy – or cringe-inducing – humour involved in abbreviating, coining nicknames, dismantling and reassembling words and phrases in a particularly British manner, then a few days later answered questions on the same subject from Andrew Marr on LBC Radio. Serena’s article is here…
It’s heartening that, despite the seeming indifference of older commentators and experts, some, mainly younger academic linguists are beginning to study these developments, applying statistical techniques to tracking the spread of new terms and analysing specifics of their users. Dr Christian Ilbury of Edinburgh University, with whom I’ve exchanged ideas, has been doing this for some time and writes here of the online personas created and celebrated by new labels, catchphrases and in-jokes…
Fads, Fashions, Lifestyles and Vibes – thirty years on
During 2022 I wrote several times about the new terminology that has been generated by younger generations’ (younger Millennials and so-called Gen Z or Zoomers) online celebration of an accelerated series of Fads, Fashions and Cults (the title of my book on the same topic published back in 1993). I was bemused, but not surprised that my articles and posts received little attention. Those over 40, even if active online or otherwise in touch with the wider culture, seem to pay no attention to what their children and grandchildren are saying, or perhaps just view their activities on social media as trivial, frivolous and ephemeral*. It’s slightly absurd that someone of my advanced age should be trying to record and comment on youth-based popular culture, but, just as back in the nineties, only a few fashionistas and influencers and a handful of style journalists manage to achieve any sort of critical perspective on the high-speed succession of poses, performances and pastiches that plays out on 21st century cyberspaces (and incidentally in teenagers’ bedrooms and college dorms too).
At the end of the year, however, I was asked to contribute to a major press review of these same phenomena, and discussed them with the MailOnline’s science reporter, Fiona Jackson. Fiona had picked up on recent mutations in slang and online jargon, in the novel use of emoji and punctuation, and changes, too, in the accents and intonations used on platforms such as TikTok – in particular the voice affectation known as ‘vocal fry.’
It’s interesting that Gen Z is seen as having a particularly exotic or impenetrable vocabulary, baffling and irritating parents, teachers, journalists and anyone too old to keep up. Inventing new words and changing the meanings of old ones, though, is something that each generation does (see UK millennials with their MLE – Multiethnic London English) and is a natural part of language. Accent is another essential component in curating and projecting one’s identity. ‘Vocal fry’ or ‘creaky voice’ first got noticed and was fiercely debated in the USA in 2015. The low, raspy growling voice tone favoured by female US celebrities has since been imitated by some younger people in the UK, and by British ‘influencers’ online, but not to the same extent. What I have noticed is not specifically vocal fry but something newer and more complex: a UK accent favoured by fashionable younger females which mixes a sort of high-pitched, lisping breathless ‘girly’ delivery with a lower-pitched drawl that can slide in and out of American intonations. Something like this is now prevalent, particularly on TikTok which is where Gen Z goes to influence and be influenced.
In the US now 63% of people aged 13 to 17 use TikTok weekly, a rate that now tops both Snapchat and Instagram. TikTok is also the go-to environment for the celebration of youth fads, fashions and lifestyle trends, not to mention the parodies, mash-ups, spoofs and in-jokes which are central to its video performances. Older people trying to keep up or simply to comprehend what is happening on TikTok or understand what Gen Z is saying and messaging should however beware: I have a suspicion, shared by a few other commentators, that many of the fads, fashions and trends they celebrate (they call them ‘vibes’ or ‘aesthetics’) are not really taken seriously at all by most of them, are passing fancies or simply spoofs perhaps designed to mock the tedious concerns of outdated millennials. Fashionable new ‘looks’ like so-called ‘goblin-mode’ which has, unusually, been noticed and publicised in the mainstream, have been appearing and disappearing on Gen Z platforms with a bewildering speed (see ‘cottagecore’, ‘blokecore’, ‘hag chic’, ‘frazzled English woman’, etc.).
Gen Z, as they come of age and begin to access power and influence in mainstream society, will inevitably affect the way we collectively behave and of course communicate. But there is an interesting phenomenon that those like me who try to track slang and new language have to face up to. That is that it’s quite impossible to predict exactly how language is going change. No so-called linguistic authorities have ever been able to guess how technology and society is going to mutate, or how fast, or which aspects of human behaviour will come to predominate in the future – even in the near-future. Gen Z may settle down into family life and work and become distracted by adult responsibilities, just as we once-radical Boomers, muted, tortured Gen X and much misunderstood millennials have done before them. Or perhaps they will not, and will manage to realise the boomers’ dream of staying radical, innovative and young forever? How their destiny plays out will dictate what they say and how they say it (and they will have to find ways to negotiate their obsessions and describe their changing environments), but I, for one, don’t dare to hazard any more than that.
*She’s much younger than 40, but journalist Marie le Conte struck a contrarian note in the New Statesman, suggesting that we shouldn’t be interested in Gen Z’s predilections…
Its finger still on the pulse of the zeitgeist, the Mail followed up with a warning to older generations that Gen Z disapprove not only of their language and their emoji use, but of their gesturing too (unsurprisingly the hand-signals castigated are all part of my own sad repertoire)…
At the end of January I talked to Karyn Hay of Radio New Zealand about Generation Zed (the preferred term in Wellington and Auckland), their language and online activities…
In February 2023 King’s College London Faculty of Arts and Humanities, host to my Slang and New Language Archive, featured my activities in their Net Gains series…
On July 11 2022 the temperature in London was 32 degrees, hotter than the notorious summer of 1976. By the 19th it had risen to a record-breaking 39 degrees, at which point I, who had mocked the complainers and declared my preference for extreme temperatures, collapsed. On a restorative stroll across the Surrey Hills five days later I could see the wildfires burning in the distance.
For the last two months on social media the hashtag #heatwaveuk has dominated the conversation. ‘Heat wave’ was first used in 1893 to describe a weather phenomenon. Noun and verb heat are descendants of Old English hætu, hæto – heat, warmth, ardor – from Proto-Germanic *haita, source also of the Old English adjective hat, hot. The ancient, pre-Germanic ancestor of these key words is unknown, although I suspect it was also the ancestor of the Greek kaiein and Lithuanian kaisti, both meaning to burn.
As folklorist Tatiana Fajardo had reminded me on a 31-degree July 17, the dog days are the hot, sultry days of summer. They were the period following the heliacal rising of the star system Sirius (known as the ‘Dog Star’), which Hellenistic astrology associated with heat, drought, lethargy, fever, & bad luck. ‘Sultry’ incidentally was first recorded in the late 15th century and is a variant form of the older swelter, to suffer discomfort from the effects of heat, itself deriving ultimately from an Old English verb meaning both to die and to burn, probably from a ProtoIndoEuropean root *swel in the sense of shine or beam.
(The French term for a period of dangerous heat, canicule, can also denote a seasonal bout of listlessness and indolence, coming as it does from Latin canicula, an affectionate diminutive of canis, dog, used of Sirius, the Dog Star.)
During this year’s dog days it has sometimes been muggy and close here in overcast suburbia. ‘Muggy’ – uncomfortably warm, humid was first recorded in 1746. It derives from rural dialect ‘mug’, mist or drizzle, via the archaic Middle English verb ‘mugen’, from Old Norse mugga, ultimately from ProtoIndoEuropean *meug- slimy, slippery.
Despite some occasional humidity we have had virtually no rain at all in July and so far in August. The ground is parched. Of uncertain origin, ‘parch’ – a verb meaning to dry by excessive heat – appeared in the 1400s referring to drying or roasting (nuts or vegetables for example). In spite of the surface resemblances it probably does not derive from either ‘perish’ or the Latin word persiccare – to dry thoroughly, which is related to dessicate. Parch is also unrelated to ‘parchment’ which came via French from a blend of Latin pergamina – writing material from Pergamum – and Parthika Pellis – scarlet leather from Parthia.
By the first week of August the authorities were imposing hosepipe bans in some areas, and the alarming lack of reservoir water was becoming apparent. A state of drought was officially declared for South, Central and Eastern England on August 12. The word derives from Old English drugaþ, drugoþ, from Proto-Germanic *drugothaz, noun form of adjective *dreug, dry. Chaucer used it in the Middle English form ‘droghte’ and ‘drouth’ was a variant form which has survived in some dialects.
In engaging in hot weather banter, those of us of a certain age are likely to reference the much-quoted tabloid headline of summers past (mocked and endlessly replicated, and possibly actually invented by Private Eye magazine) ‘Phew What a Scorcher!’ or the Fast Show’s 1994 comedy catchphrase ‘Scorchio!’ Scorch was first thought to be related to Old French escorchier – to strip off the skin – from Vulgar Latin *excorticare to flay, but is nowadays usually derived from Middle English ‘scorchen’ or ‘scorcnen’ (to make dry, singe), probably an alteration of the Old Norse *scorpnen – to be shrivelled.
The Mirror‘s ‘Blowtorch Britain’ is a slightly more original take on ‘Tinderbox Britain’, a standard scare headline in these conditions, and for once, after the driest July since 1836, we can forgive the tabloids their perennial overexcited comparisons; ‘Hotter than Corfu!/Tenerife!/Honolulu!/Ibiza!’, ‘Hotter than the Sahara!’
At the humid, warm end of August my friend Grace Tierney looked at the origins of some other weather and climate descriptions…
*If you are searching for word origins and histories – etymologies – online, the well-known dictionary sites are not necessarily the best sources. I recommend https://www.etymonline.com/ whose author will have consulted, compared and synthesised the various ‘authorities’ before producing their own well-judged and thorough summaries.
tony thorne 