The word preppy has undergone a considerable evolution since Boomers first used it to describe attire that reflects a conservative, polished, East-coast prep school look. For middle-schoolers today, preppy connotes an entirely different aesthetic: girly clothing that’s frilly, often Barbie-pink or decorated with animal prints. In his new book, Algospeak: How Social Media is Transforming the Future of Language (Bookshop|Amazon) linguist Adam Aleksic shows the role social media algorithms played in the development of an entirely new sense of the word. This is part of a complete episode.
The so-called “lifestyle influencer accent” you hear in videos on TikTok and YouTube, where someone speaks with rising tones at the end of sentences and phrases, suggesting that they’re about to say something important, is a form of what linguists...
Meg in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, gets why the state highway department encourages drivers to use their blinkers when changing lanes, but placing a digital sign at the Sagamore Bridge that reads Use Ya Blinkah is, well, a lexical bridge too far. Meg’s...
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