Word Power.

Originally written April 6, 2008. Vintage!

This is something I’ve been pondering since Friday. The backstory: My wireless aircard quit working and I had to go to AT&T for an upgrade. One of the salesmen and I were talking about a girl’s shoes (Jordans!) and how when they first came out way back in the day how people freaked out and the stores sold out immediately and everything. Then he said, "Man, those shoes were phat!" Phat? Really? Yeah, he said it as a joke, but I haven’t heard anyone use phat since the eighth grade.

This brought about the pondering and the question: Where did these words go?

You know the ones I’m talking about. Remember the first time you heard someone say phat? Excuse me? I am not fat! No, not fat, phat. You know, Pretty Hot And Tempting? Sure, we all used phat jokingly. Nobody took it seriously. And we said it all the freaking time. Then, all of a sudden, phat was gone.

So, where do they go? Is there some Slang Word Heaven where Phat gets jiggy with Groovy and it’s like totally neato?

Is it just me or is the lifespan of the slang word getting shorter? Today, a woman came into work wearing a t-shirt that said Bling Bling!. When’s the last time anyone has said bling bling? Or for that matter, whatever happened to stuff being whack? That wasn’t that long ago, folks. Those words are gone...replaced by LOLSpeak.

Really? Really? LOLspeak is the ultimate laziness...or maybe it’s not. It takes a lot more effort to type out sumthing lyk dis && int3ntnlly sp3llng stuf rong && runon sint3nc3s wit know puntation or prop3r grammmr. That was hard. Somewhere out there an English teacher is opening up some veins. Please, think of the English teachers.

But I digress. The point is, what will we be saying next year? Krunk has gone the way of gettin’ jiggy wit’ it and next year, we will most likely not be wildin’ out...but did anyone wild out this year? It’s almost nostalgic to think of the words that we’ve already abandoned and the ones we haven’t even come up with yet. Or maybe...just maybe...we’ll be kickin’ it old school and go all Shakespeare - thou and thine and light breaking through a yonder window.

Think about it.