Changing for the better?

The English language is constantly growing and evolving.

What’s that? You already knew that? Well, so did I. But for some reason, this not-so-surprising thought whapped me upside the head the other day.

A writer friend and I were at Starbucks (where else?) when she asked if I thought OMG was in the dictionary yet.

“No, but I’m pretty sure they just added ‘friend’ as a verb.”

I couldn’t find any proof of this notion when I looked, but I did find this article from cracked.com listing “muggle,” “cyberslacking,” “gaydar,” “threequel” and “frankenfood” as new words in the Oxford English Dictionary.)

Another article says “turducken,” “frenemy,” “bromance” and “steampunk” made the cut. And in 2009, Merriam-Webster added “staycation,” “vlog,” “webisode” and “waterboarding,” among others.

While no one uses the word “bifurcate” anymore, phrases like “frenemy” and “bromance” have slipped into the common vernacular. I should know. I recently used “bromance” (correctly) in a sentence in my WIP.

And on my other blog, it’s easy to slip in an OMG. Heck, even the word “blog” itself is a relatively new creation.

It makes me wonder: Will future generations look back and laugh at the way we talk/write? Will they even be able to understand us? Or will our frenemies and cyberslacking sound as foreign to them as Elizabethan English seems to most of us?

All I can say is thank goodness “Gag me with a spoon” didn’t catch hold!