bootleg
adj.— «“You guys need to get new headphones. Most of them are so bootleg! They don’t work and kill my ears. Please.”…”Libby admits that until hearing from you, she’d never used a pair of headphones in the library. Yuck. We’ll replace them. Libby was also puzzled by your choice of words, and had to ask for help with the phrase ‘so bootleg.’ Libby, being a tad on the old-fashioned side, associates bootleg with illegal liquor or Chinese knock-off CDs. She never considered bootleg headphones. So for all of you really un-hip readers, Libby asked a very with-it librarian for help. She defined bootleg as ‘totally skanky.’”» —by Libby Musselman Library (Gettysburg College, Pa.) Jan. 25, 2001. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
It was a dark and stormy night. So begins the long and increasingly convoluted prose of Edwards Bulwer-Lytton’s best-known novel. Today the annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest asks contestants for fanciful first sentences that are similarly...
How do social media algorithms shape the way we communicate? A new book argues that the competition for clicks is changing the way we speak and write, from the so-called “YouTube accent” to the surprising evolution of the word preppy. Also: A...