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What's the Word: YOUTHQUAKE

Hanna Shelton

Recently, the Oxford English Dictionary declared the word “youthquake” the 2017 Word of the Year. At a first glance, it is fairly obvious that “youthquake” is a combined word, or compound noun, like “desktop” or “blackboard.” But what does the term actually mean? Interestingly, the Word of the Year is one that clearly has not long been in the language, and whose meaning is not immediately obvious. However, the Oxford English Dictionary records the use of “youthquake,” which refers to a significant social or cultural change caused by the influence of young people. And young people certainly exerted great influence over events in 2017, especially in the area of neologisms, or the invention of “new words.”

So we might well wonder: how and why are new words entering the English language? Are they here to stay? And if they manage to find their way into modern dictionaries, will they remain in usage, or will they become the fossilized record of a trendy term used once upon a time? Interestingly, one of the dictionaries most likely to record new words and phrases is the so-called Urban Dictionary. Unlike the Oxford English Dictionary or Webster’s Dictionary, the Urban Dictionary is a completely web-based, crowd-sourced dictionary of new words and shifted word meanings. Founded in the United States by Aaron Peckham, the Urban Dictionary records almost minute-by-minute the evolution of the language. What sort of words are being recorded in this dictionary? Interestingly, words such as Milkshake Duck (something that appears good at first, then disappoints), Ghosting (suddenly disappearing from someone’s social media), and Juvenoia (a fear of young people) have all appeared recently in the Urban Dictionary.

As already suggested, not all of these words will eventually catch on and become part of our daily language. The words and meanings found in the Urban Dictionary do not yet have widespread currency even in the United States, to say nothing of other countries where English is spoken. Moreover, there is nothing to guarantee that even this dictionary or the slang (and at times vulgar) words and meanings it records will have a lasting place in the culture.

But there is a more interesting point here. On the one hand, a language has a long tradition behind it. For this reason, we might be tempted to ask whether (young) people are “ruining” the language with so many rapid and experimental changes. On the other hand, ruining is clearly a limited way of thinking about the change to a language, which after all is a living, evolving thing. While we might be a bit dismayed at the pace of linguistic change today, it is in the very nature of a language to change and develop like the human communities that use that language.

As a result of changes in social customs or technological advancements, people have for a long time now been adding words to the language, or shifting existing meanings. Some neologisms may stick around, others won’t, and some words have been in English rather longer than we might guess. To return to “youthquake,” the first recorded use of the word in the Oxford English Dictionary comes in 1967. Perhaps our upcoming Words of the Year will likewise record our taste for the modern? But that is a question for another time.  

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