Word Mutations

By Gordon Hopkins This is unacceptable.Words are important to me. As a writer and journalist, words are my bread and butter. So, as you can imagine, I believe the written word is deserving of a certain amount of respect. To me, the word is sacred.Unfortunately, though a mere two decades old, plus some change, the new millennium has already inflicted some unspeakable crimes against my beloved language. I'm talking about things like:Fo Shizzle (Sounds like a soft drink.)Chillax (Sounds like a brand name laxative.)On Fleek (Sounds like a symptom that would cause your doctor to order a biopsy.)Dawg (Because, despite ever-present digital media that defines the latest generations, some Millennials refuse to use spell-check.)I Can't Even (Unlike most of what the younger generations say, I actually understand what this means and…I can't even.)Language is a living thing and, like all living things, it evolves. I am the first to admit that language must adapt to an ever-changing world. If it didn't, we'd still be calling cars horseless carriages.Of course, like anything that evolves, it can occasionally head down an evolutionary blind alley. That's how you ended up with an appendix.Then there are these things called mutations. While sometimes not a bad thing, or so the X-Men would have us believe, most mutations are something we don't want contaminating the gene pool. If you are a chicken farmer and one day you discover one of your hens has grown fins, you probably want to separate her from the rest of the flock.Like everything else bad on the planet, I'm prepared to blame social media. It has done strange things to our language. Social media is like the language equivalent of bombarding living things with radiation to create horrible mutations.That's how we ended up with “humble brag.”It is my opinion that such “word mutations” should be culled from the English language to prevent further contamination. Unfortunately, those institutions we would normally expect to protect us from word mutations are not actively culling such abominations. Worse, they are endorsing, even participating in, the “cretinization” (yes, I just made that word up) of language.If anything should be a bulwark against word mutations, it is the Oxford English Dictionary. Yet, for the first time, Oxford allowed the public to vote for its 2022 Word of the Year.This is always a terrible idea. Okay, not always. Voting for your government is a good idea. However, I am reminded of that time Greenpeace allowed the public to vote to name a humpback whale. The poor aquatic mammal ended up with Mr. Splashy Pants.So what is 2022's Word of the year? “Goblin mode.”Oxford defines goblin mode as, “A type of behavior which is unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly or greedy, typically in a way that rejects social norms or expectations.”Sounds a bit like how Oxford decided on this year's Word of the Year.This is a terrible choice. I object to the choice not because it is a ridiculous bit of slang or because I am an old grump who hates anyone who might use a term like this, which is anyone under the age of 25. No, my objection is completely objective. It is based on the math.Goblin mode is not a word.Goblin mode is TWO words.Do better, Oxford.

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