Language Lives Forever

Every decade gave us weird words that we still use to this day.

Friday, April 16, 2010 17:09 GMT

In his book, There’s A Word For It: The Explosion Of The American Language Since 1900 (Harmony Books), renowned lexicographer Sol Steinmetz discusses the boom of the English language in the last 110 years and the words each decade produced.

Not only that, but how these words came to be, and how English speakers went from using 90,000 words in regular conversation to nearly 500,000 words.

For example, the 1940’s gave chatterboxes terms like “blitzkrieg” and “antibiotics” while the 1980’s saw the coining of “anime,” “high five,” and “moonwalk.”

Steinmetz says pop culture, historical events, and invention fuels the need to create new words to describe new objects, fads, and events.

The Internet, especially, has accounted for an upswing of new terminology.

So even though people are no longer cutting a rug at their local speakeasy the terms live on.