That’s because language change is frequently a sign of bigger social changes, which makes people anxious. It’s why people above the age of forty have always loathed teen slang, no matter the era: it represents a new generation rising up and taking over. One of my mom’s friends, a guy in his late fifties, recently told me he “hates” so many of today’s popular slang words (shade, lit, G.O.A.T.) because “they do nothing to improve the English language.” What’s funny is that I can almost promise, forty years ago, his parents were saying the exact same thing about cool, bummer, and freaking out,
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