Several weeks ago, a Daily reader by the name of Stanley wrote to me about my rather strong negative opinion regarding the misuse of "literally." Stan (can I call you that?) himself didn't seem to have much of a problem with the non-literal application of the word and pointed out that while getting all riled up about poor language usage, I failed to make mention of an important related point — that language evolves along with society and that, moreover, may not be such a bad thing.
And he was right. Well, mostly. I stand my ground about "literally" — there's just no need to sacrifice a unique word for yet another intensifier — but the boy had a point.
If language were stagnant, we might still be speaking Latin or — gulp — reading more Beowulf. We certainly wouldn't have arrived at some of the contemporary words we love most, and diphthongs would be splattered all over our essays.
It's through slang, pop culture, mistakes and open-mindedness that we keep our language up to date, and if a few casualties along the road is what it takes, then so be it.
Consider, for example, the fabulous little word "meh."
That's right, I said "word." Not expression; not colloquialism. Word. Last year, the Collins English Dictionary decided to include "meh" in its 30th anniversary edition after the apathetic expression, popularized by "The Simpsons" in 2001, became a hit.
Once upon a time, on par with the likes of "grrr" or "blech," or perhaps even a little more indie, "meh" was the undefined, murky expression that could say just about anything, depending on voice inflection. But like Dr. Dre in the Dr. Pepper ads and post-Mean Girls Lindsay, "meh" sold out. Overwhelmed by popularity and success, "meh" lost its way, sacrificing its freedom and malleability for a spot in the limelight of the mainstream, corporate world of English: the dictionary.
Getting back to Stanley's point, though, plenty of words like "meh" that are now considered formal English started out as improper speech or slang, and there is no reason to condemn the plenty more that are evolving right now.
Like eggcorns. If you haven't used one before, you've at least seen one used. When picking up on a phrase aurally rather than visually, it is easy to mishear words and substitute them with ones that sound similar but distort the entire phrase's meaning. For example, people often mispronounce "for all intents and purposes" as "for all intensive purposes," which — known as a malapropism — sounds similar but doesn't mean very much at all.
Eggcorns result from a similar slip of the ear but do not change the meaning of the word or phrase when spoken because, rather than replacing words with similar sounding ones, eggcorns replace words with homonyms. It is only in writing that eggcorns reveal their humor: "jaw-dropping" becomes "jar-dropping," "haphazard" becomes "half-hazard," "acorn" becomes "eggcorn," the mistake that gave birth to the new word in the first place.
And it seems that adopting our mistakes as new English words is not uncommon. "Crash blossom" recently became the popularly used term for a grammatically confusing or ridiculous headline after one particular article, about a violinist whose career blossomed after a plane accident, was titled "Violinist linked to JAL crash blossoms."
Sure, "crash blossom" and "eggcorn" haven't quite made it into the dictionary yet. But their prevalence is growing, and "eggcorn" has gained such widespread recognition that your professors might even mention the word in class.
So the next time someone tells you that your personal catchphrase just isn't going to happen, brush off your shoulders and keep your head up. Two wrongs might not make a right, but apparently a few hundred more do.
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Romy Oltuski is a junior majoring in English. She can be reached at Romy.Oltuski@tufts.edu
