ciao
n.— «“All those who have chosen public safety as a career, corrections officers and police officers, your byword is “ciao,”” said the Rev. John S. Schiavone, adding the word is slang for “I am your servant.”…Gonzalez was remembered during eulogies…for beginning and ending every conversation with the word “ciao.”» —“Officers gather to mourn guard slain at Chino prison” by Paul Chavez Mercury News (San Jose, California) Jan. 18, 2005. (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...