2429 Slanguage

The great thing about a living language is that despite the curmudgeonry of the old grammarians, it changes and adapts to new things.  So you don't have to use an old word to describe something that never could have taken place in an old context.  Then again, it's perfectly acceptable to morph an old word to have new meaning.

By the way, shouldn't the word palindrome, which is the word for words that are spelled the same forward and backward, like Bob or mom, actually be palindromeemordnilap? 

Anyhow.  Take the new word I saw the other day.  "Swatting."  Swatting could, of course, mean swatting a fly.  But it could also mean putting in a prank call to summon a SWAT team.  Say What?  Yep.  That's what it sometimes means today.

Unfortunately it costs valuable emergency responder time and spends lots of taxpayers' money, so it's a criminal offense.  Because first off you're using the 911 system for a practical joke.  And second, SWAT teams come loaded for the expectation of violence and who knows what could go wrong.  It's not just an innocent hoax, like unleashing a twitterstorm that Abe Vigoda or Kevin Bacon is dead.

It may be something folks do when they're doing the other new word I heard.  "Cyberloafing."  Some researchers recently reported that workers sitting at their desks the day after the daylight saving time changeover were lazy and lethargic and would usually waste unproductive time at their computers cyberloafing.  Idling away the time dinking around on the internet. 

Cyberloaf.  I love it.  Like a meatloaf or nutloaf or some other holiday concoction. 

Or, to take a swat at the new language of a cyberloafer, "I Googled up some pimento loaf and had it sameday shipped from Amazon Prime."

New words are fun.

America, ya gotta love it.