Twitter has already birthed an entire ecosystem of other sites that extend its power or interact with it. But Twitter isn’t just a platform for technological innovation: It’s showing signs as an engine of creativity for the language, too. Erin McKean Read Quote
We think people go to a dictionary to find out what a word means. Most people go to the dictionary because they don’t want to look stupid. Erin McKean Read Quote
It’s difficult to choose a Word of the Year in the year that you’re in. It’s one of those things that hindsight makes more apparent. It’s like looking at pictures from 10 years ago, and you notice the flannel and the ripped jeans. At the time, it didn’t look to you like a real fashion trend. Erin McKean Read Quote
Part of the joy and pleasure of English is its boundless creativity: I can describe a new machine as bicyclish, I can say that I’m vitamining myself to stave off a cold, I can complain that someone is the smilingest person I’ve ever seen, and I can decide, out of the blue, that ‘fetch’ is now the word I want to use to mean ‘cool.’ Erin McKean Read Quote
The use of food metaphors is really well established English… Somebody is a peach, a hot tamale. Erin McKean Read Quote
Uniforms are intended to make the wearer look as strong as possible. Soldiers could fight in leotards, but that’s never going to happen because leotards aren’t intimidating. Erin McKean Read Quote
We’ve been using ‘rejuvenate,’ meaning to restore youth, to make young again, as a verb for at least 200 years. Erin McKean Read Quote
If words are doing their job, then their novelty will not be the most noticeable thing about them. Erin McKean Read Quote
