Melissa in Greensboro, North Carolina, has been sparring with the Gen Z members of her family over the shifting meanings of words. Her kids use aesthetic as an adjective to mean “aesthetically pleasing,” as in That’s so aesthetic. They also refer to...
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...
Following up on our conversation about whether cursive handwriting should be taught in schools, 23-year-old Rachel from Newport News, Virginia, wrote to say she learned cursive in third grade, but has never used it since. This is part of a complete...
