Onwords

You might be wondering why young people are calling each other a type of women’s underwear. But “brah,” is really a version of “bro,” a term with which even the oldest among us are familiar. “Bro,” is, of course, a shortening of “brother,” an expression expanding filial relationships beyond the literal family. Our everyday use of brother in this way goes back at least to the Great Depression with its anthem “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” Faith groups had used the word “brother” for millennia before that, to denote a family of co-religionists, and Shakespeare’s famous St. Crispin’s Day speech from Henry V has its title character calling together his knights as a “band of brothers.” But the “bro” of today is a more common reference, referring to anyone the speaker happens to be addressing. Its drift from “bro” to “brah” has now started to slide into “bruh,” and is applied regardless of gender. This casual use exists parallel to use that specifies a certain type of male, one we might

Metaphorical language is powerful. We use it to make the unfamiliar familiar and to make us see the familiar in a different light. A reporter may speak of the “race” to an upcoming election, or a poet may liken separated lovers to two legs of a compass, physically distant but spiritually connected. But metaphors can also lead us astray. A common metaphor compares the brain to a computer, as the body’s “central processing unit,” with thoughts compared to software. At first, this seems to work: after all, our brains can do real computations, and thoughts seem to “run” through our heads. Yet this metaphor breaks down when we consider that even everyday thoughts and feelings can be chaotic in ways that would make a computer crash, that our experience of the those feelings and thoughts cannot explain a computer’s experience, if it has any, of the software it runs. And how odd a race would it be if, like an election, it was stopped at the finish line and the spectators were allowed to vote

I was intrigued immediately by the way the people of Hong Kong describe themselves. Through all the coverage of the Umbrella Movement of 2014 to the more recent protests against interference by mainland China, to concerns over the coronavirus, they have used one term to describe themselves: Hong Kong people.

The word “play” comes up when accessing music, on streaming services, and, constantly, with video games. Play is pervasive: an actor plays a role; the ump yells “Play ball!”; a golfer plays through. We even apply “play” to sex: a “playa’” plays the field, looking not for love and commitment but to score. If we object, we’re reminded to “hate the playa’, not the game.” Play, which we associate with entertainment, is very serious business, with the video game market alone expected to top $20 billion this year, according to business analysis company Statista. We also use the word “play” to refer to something loose. A worn steering rack on a car, for example, would have a lot of play. Think back to the first set of examples in this commentary. They all have one thing in common: they are highly structured—even the “play” of the pick-up artist has guidelines and goals. This is play as it is controlled by others: by designers or sanctioning bodies, by people who have a vested interest in our

When smartphones and online text editors no longer auto-corrected “gonna” and “kinda,” I knew I had to fight back. It’s not that these constructions are necessarily wrong. Contractions — such as the one at the beginning of the previous sentence — have become acceptable in many circumstances, for example, radio commentaries. “Goodbye” has so long been contracted that most of us have forgotten, or never knew, that it once meant “God be with you.” Language changes, as it must, to meet the needs of its users. What we lose, though, when we smear together ”going to,” “kind of,” and “sort of” is speech elevated for purposes of completeness, precision, and seriousness of occasion. That a student of mine recently said he literally did not know that “gonna” meant “going to” brings the point home: Our linguistic experiences have become so flattened that formal English is sadly unavailable to broad segments of its users. Importantly, writing communicates across time and easily moves between

With the rise of esports, we see also the re-emergence of the e-prefix. Esports are, as the name implies, video games played competitively and for paying spectators. And they’ve gotten big, fast: collectively they make up a billion dollar industry. While people like me may not see what is entertaining about watching other people play video games, it’s not surprising that esports exist: if people do it, they can find a way to make it a competition. But the word “esports” harkens back decades to when the word “email” was coined to differentiate between mail on paper and electronically-aided missives. This old-fashioned use of the e-prefix may indicate the remaining power of traditional sports, perhaps showing that not everyone accepts esports as “real” sports. However much revenue they generate, esports still need the distinction so we don’t confuse them with competitions involving fields and diamonds, bats and balls. Compare the “e” prefix with the “i” prefix, though. Apple brought us

For some reason, the word “hoax” has been on my mind a lot lately. “Hoax” is a word with a storied past. Famous examples range from faux autobiographies of Hitler and Howard Hughes to a supposed mummified giant dug up in Cardiff, New York, in 1869. The most famous archaeological hoax, and one of history’s most famous, is Piltdown man, in which an amateur geologist claimed to have found in southeast England the missing link between humans and apes. All of these great hoaxes share certain features: a good deal of effort went into creating them; they successfully fooled many people, often for a long time; and their creators all intended to deceive. The motives for perpetrating hoaxes, though, seem varied: Hoaxsters have wanted fortune and fame, but sometimes they were interested in showing us just how gullible people can be. But a fourth factor also defines hoaxes: they appear in times, fields, and places of uncertainty such as the ambiguity of fossil evidence, the need to understand

When you hear this, the term “OK Boomer” will probably already be fading from public view. As you may recall, the term was briefly noteworthy as a way for Millennials and those younger to signal Baby Boomers’ cluelessness about matters important to young people. “OK Boomer” has been appended to subjects such as climate change, sexual orientation and gender identity, and the crushing debt from student loans. Boomers responded by calling the term ageist, and Millennials and Gen Z shot back that such a reaction from Boomers simply proves their point: “OK Boomer” is not actually about Boomers, and they’re clueless in assuming it is. The term is of interest here because of how the very debate over “OK Boomer” seems to have derailed the term. When the initial accusation that “OK Boomer” brought up, that Boomers were clueless, was met with a clueless response, there was nowhere else for the term to go, nothing else for it to do. “OK Boomer,” in making history, quickly became history. We often

As an English teacher, I warn students away from Wikipedia. Yet the way it builds meanings and information collectively, from users rather than only experts, mimics the way language itself builds meaning in the real world. Among scholars, Wikipedia’s user-generated knowledge has no place: to know is to study, and there is a formal process for that. Yet even seasoned academics go to Wikipedia first for basic definitions and background information. And studies have shown that Wikipedia’s accuracy often rivals or exceeds that of sources that rely on a single or handful of researchers or scholars. So the problem with Wikipedia is not that it’s bad, but that it’s suspect: by opening the process of creating meaning to just anybody, those whose job it is to create meaning are rendered redundant; their expertise is devalued, their ability to act as a check on what we collectively know eroded. Wikipedia also seems to reinforce an overall decline in trust in institutions—a decline we can track

There is nothing wrong with numbering off talking points while speaking publicly. It helps listeners keep track of what you’re saying, helping the audience make sense of it, especially when tackling complex issues. But what I’ve noticed lately are speakers listing off “number one” after they’ve made their first point. For example, an interview subject might begin a statement by saying “We’re going to conduct a thorough investigation of the theft of Lizzo’s flute, number one. Number two . . . .” Listing points this way allows people speaking extemporaneously to give the impression that they are well organized and have all their talking points planned out, that they are totally not just making it up as they go along. Yet there is nothing wrong with making it up as you’re going along when you’re speaking off the cuff: indeed, it’s expected during interviews, public meetings, or the myriad chance encounters with potentially viral video created by contemporary life. Ironically, labeling the

Virtue signaling is a term describing people publicly declaring their positions on various issues of the day, using print, speech, or social media to align themselves, often with progressive causes or points of view. For the more cynical among us, virtue signaling seems self-aggrandizing, the attempt by the signalers to bring the glory of goodness upon themselves by declaring just which side of history they are on. Whether it’s white folks hashtagging Black Lives Matter or straight people retweeting articles on LGBT issues, it’s hard not to see virtue signaling as more about the person doing it than the cause being promoted. Virtue signaling also smacks of a sort of false courage, a coming out by people who have no need for coming out, directed at an audience that already agrees. Repeating a progressive talking point takes little effort, even less now that our public declarations can be electronically replicated. Yet virtue signaling has existed for as long as people have communicated:

As we move into the holiday season, it seems like a good time to consider the ways we use the word holiday and its implications. Originally meaning “holy day,” the term has expanded over the centuries to include any day set aside for celebration, religious observance, or rest.

Social media have spawned many new words, and now they bring us “influencer.” Social media influencers are distinguished by their use of YouTube, Instagram, or similar platforms to impact their many followers’ opinions and beliefs. These followers are typically young people who receive the bulk of their news and entertainment from online videos. We used to use the word “celebrity” to describe such people, with its implication that their work and contributions to the culture were something to celebrate, that we all shared in their accomplishments. “Influencer,” though, denotes only an instrumental relationship. A celebration is a party; an influence simply helps make something happen. One is decidedly good; the other can be good, neutral, or downright sinister. Sinister is not how one would describe most online influencers. For the most part, their channels are full of normal-sounding, normal-acting people, generally of above-average looks, who produce slightly above-amateur pictures

As a new school year gets under way, both students and teachers are likely to report some anxiety. “Anxiety” is a word with both clinical and common meanings, part of the complex dance we have with such terms in a culture driven by science and technology. In this case, it shows how language users borrow words from science when they resonate with how we feel—and how we want to feel about how we feel. The word anxiety itself obliges those feelings by also sounding like what we go through. Out-breathing the “a” sound gets bunched up and caught in the throat by the “n” and the “x.” Saying the word “anxiety” is almost like choking on it, mimicking the throat tightness we might feel in an anxious state. Yet using the word “anxiety” instead of, say, the word “nervous,” also suggests a need to invoke a medical state. We feel nervous, but we have anxiety. Nervousness is a state or emotion, like anger or joy, and therefore passing. But anxiety we reference the same way we would getting an

The term “confirmation bias” has come to the fore recently, describing everything from the publication of scientific papers to polls of public opinion. Briefly stated, “confirmation bias” is the tendency to only accept new information that supports what we already think. Gen X-ers like me, for example, might be inclined to believe any study indicating that Baby Boomers are self-centered, that Millennials are entitled, or that only the unsophisticated don’t like craft beer. In science, confirmation bias often comes in the form of fudged study results, in which researchers select data or use statistical analysis in such a way that supports their hypothesis—no matter what the actual results may be. Clearly, this is unethical. But scientists sometimes do this because they know that studies showing positive results are more likely to be published—and the academic careers of many scientists rely on being published. This also shows an overall confirmation bias in the academic journals that

Conspiracy theories have been around a long time—from speculations about what happened to the children of the Russian royal family after the revolution to the fate of the Lindbergh baby to more contemporary concerns about what’s actually in the contrails airplanes make as they fly. Our capacity for language helps create this phenomenon. Even the most direct words, nouns and verbs mostly, remove us one step from what they are referencing: the word train is not a train, and even if the word “train” disappeared tomorrow, linked cars on tracks would still trundle across the plains. The capacity for language means we can make experiences portable, creating complex stories about where to hunt for food or how to ford a river. But stories become hard to link to facts: the same ability to tell stories about a very real war allows us to tell a made up story about foreign people with two heads and necks like giraffes. And so the fact that contrails are water vapor exists on the same level as the

A few terms we have to protect from the unstable landscape of language, and I nominate “slippery slope” as one of them.

As language users, we reserve the right to make up words. There’s nothing wrong with this, as long as those with whom we are communicating understand what we’re trying to get across. No lesser beings than Shakespeare and Dr. Seuss added new words to the language, and slang continues to bloom.

Among the many things Millennials are supposed to have killed is the word “adult.” For evidence of this, their critics look no further than the word “adulting,” which creates a verb out of what used to be a venerable and well-respected noun. A typical usage of “adulting” might be something like “I’d love to stay late at work and fix all your computer problems, but I’m done adulting for today.” The implication here is that “adult” has moved from a state of being to an activity, from a fact of growing up to a choice one makes depending on one’s whim or mood. Thus “adulting” is a stand-in for everything else critics of Millennials don’t like about them: that they refuse to play by workforce rules, that they refuse to leave their parents’ basements, that they choose not to learn how to drive. These charges are, by and large, unfair: Millennials are saddled with unprecedented student debt; graduated into a rotten job market; and, being the kids of soccer moms, were shuttled about instead of