Horrible Jargon We Got Used To

We love to complain about language and they way other people mangle it. Like complaining about the younger generation, it has always been so. Linguist Arika Okrent tells us of some previous controversies about making nouns into verbs and making up new words. Those words are just normal to us now.  

English is a fluid language, and changes all the time. What is incorrect usage at one point becomes correct over time by that very usage. Otherwise, we’d all be speaking Old English. But then again, Old English was so fluid that it died out in favor of Middle English. The very idea cautions us to keep an open mind, or we’ll never be able to understand how our great-granddaughter turned out to be a well-regarded author. (via mental_floss)