'Aaaah FFS, 'amazeballs' has made it into the Oxford English Dictionary This was the week when so-called “sharing economy” car firms – more accurately “slightly different ways to turn a profit” car firms – Uber and Lyft got into a bit of a barney. Lyft told CNN that Uber staff were pranking the company out of profits by ordering rides and then cancelling them, as well as ordering Lyft services for a …
All right, you know what? I'm getting tired of this. Dictionaries record the language as it is spoken. They are not a set of rules. If a word gains traction and becomes part of the language, it will be put in the dictionary.
How many of the words you all use every day were once considered vulgar, silly or impertinent? 150 years ago there were complaints about new words entering the language - words like curry and thug, and constructions like "slice of life". Prior to that, practically the entire modern English language was invented from whole cloth by Shakespeare, and the complaints and mockery his words generated as they entered the language were legion.
Language changes. Get over it.
@Graham Dawson
All right, you know what? I'm getting tired of this. Dictionaries record the language as it is spoken. They are not a set of rules. If a word gains traction and becomes part of the language, it will be put in the dictionary.
Partly true, partly not. If a word gains traction and becomes a generally recognized part of the language it belongs.
However, dictionaries like to OED may not be "rules", but they are, in a very real sense, standards. And if they are going to be standards, they need to have standards. Otherwise, we all wind up like Lewis Carroll's Alice, dealing with the Humpty Dumpties around us who define words to mean whatever is expedient for them.
Our lexicographers should stay out of that business, and leave it to the politicians who are the real experts at it.
As for "cray." The Aussie/Kiwi use of the term for "crayfish" is entirely plausible. But, I live in the US, and I have never heard the term cray cray used for crazy--even on the shows the Disney channel tailors for 12-14 year girls. (Having granddaughters that age, I've gotten to watch more than a few.)
I have no doubt that the term is used somewhere by that demographic group (probably California). If and when it becomes standard usage in the US, it belongs in OED. Until then, I see no reason to let teeny-boppers set our standards. .
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If a new word does gain traction, that's one thing.
If its obviously meaningless drivel pushed by mass-media companies as a parody of reality, leave it in the gutter to die, or better, kick it into the path of oncoming traffic.
Both curry and thug are derivatives of proper words and are usefully used to describe something.
Actually, I'm not so fussed as long as the new words are clearly marked "slang" and teachers enforce the rule that slang should never be used in school because schools are there to teach you to do things correctly.
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