Long, long ago, or maybe not that long, if you heard something was going viral, you’d head away from whatever it was as fast and as far as you could flee. Now you’re likely to check YouTube to see for yourself what the big deal is.
Words change as we use them, dropping one meaning and picking up another. Languages, like living organisms, adjust to their environments.
A word may be like a jellyfish with long separate tentacles reaching out from the body’s center (in English, often a Latin or Greek root). In order not to be stung by choosing a word that doesn’t quite mean what you intend, it’s a good idea to check before using the latest version of a word.
How is it that words change? Often, words put on new tentacles simply because people use them to mean other than what they once meant. For instance, the word awesome has fallen by the wayside a bit. It used to mean inspiring awe, a very powerful emotion. Lately, it is used synonymously with neat, cool, very good, something much milder than the earlier meaning.
In the case of another word, -bad - a reversal occurred some time ago, which led to people using the word bad to mean good. I don’t know bad’s dictionary status at the moment, but I bet good and bad are not yet synonymous in the official list of words and meanings. In time, the status of bad meaning good may change, but by that time the slang will probably have gone out of style.
It does happen now and then that a new word or phrasing or usage becomes part of the official lexicon. When a person or group coins a word and the word goes viral among the population, the newly minted word (or different definition) can find a home in the dictionary, at least until it changes to some other form entirely. I just checked, and bad is still “rotten, harmful, incorrect, wicked, unpleasant,” etc., until definition number 17, at which time it is defined as “extremely good” (Encarta Dictionary).
In a living language, one awesome aspect has to be the liveliness of our speech, the way our words change with us over time.
See you next time the breeze is cool, the sun is up, and the waves roll into view! ‘Til then, hang ten!
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