Parroting Words
And Not Knowing What They Mean
Teenagers have always had their secret language. First of all, you can get away with something when you are within earshot of an adult. I remember when “cool” was becoming a thing. It was cool to say cool. There was also the added benefit that adults did not say cool.
Language evolves. There are the trendy words that don’t last long, and then there are the words that eventually get written into the dictionary.
I never had children, and consequently, I never had grandchildren. I don’t know their speak. I am not active on social media, having discovered there are only people who complain on our neighborhood online group, so I don’t tend to spend much time there other than to ask if anybody felt the most recent earthquake. But, sometimes, these grown-ass adults say things I don’t understand. It gets worse when I go surfing around at Reddit.com.
Since I am hard of hearing and spend much of my human discourse saying, “What? Will you say that again, please?” to people. It just gets tiring. Even when it is my husband, after I have asked him to say something three times, all I get is mumble, mumble, mumble as he looks off into the distance and not at me. I shrug and figure if it is something I need to know, he will say something.
I could go scare up some hearing aids, except my ears are very sensitive, and having anything in them is torture. So, I just never entertained the possibility. Besides, I am a writer and am content with my own company. Plus, I talk to Spirit constantly, and I can hear them just fine. Somebody in Spirit just said, “Yo.”
To be on the safe side, because I never really ever knew what Yo means other than I in Spanish and something like hello in English, Google said it is an informal exclamation. Then, I asked what the etymology of the word is, and Google said it comes from a natural exclamation first appearing in Late Middle English, which would have put it between 1400 and 1500.
So, why I started this piece is I remembered how I went around when I was in the 9th grade saying dork a lot. He’s a dork. She’s sort of dorky. I mean, we were all saying it. It was months. At least, it was a long time. My father asked me if I knew what it was. I said, “It means you are stupid. All the kids say it.” He said, “It means penis.”
I never said it again.
Wait an f*cking minute. I just looked up dork on Google. It means a socially inept person, just like I thought it did. It can also mean penis in the vulgar. Thanks, Dad. That was a good word, and I haven’t used it since you said that 53 years ago. Have you ever heard a crowd in Spirit start laughing? Yeah, they’re all up there right now having a good chuckle.
Hmmmph.
The Links: For a good time, reach out to r/asklinguistics at Reddit