In March 2021, deep into the pandemic, Kathryn Hymes wrote a story for The Atlantic about “familects,” dialects and shorthand11 that develop between those who spend a lot of time in a shared space, speculating that the pandemic lockdowns may have accelerated the process. One person gives Hymes the example of hog, meaning less than a full cup of coffee: “She explained that this comes from ‘a smaller-than-the-others coffee mug with a little hedgehog on it that my roommates and I found one day.’ Hog has become an established unit of measurement in her house: ‘I’ve now also asked for and been
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