Word Salads?

Staying Up to Speed with Today's Vernacular

Maybe it’s because I am a writer, or maybe I’m just a nerd, but I love words! I get excited when I find new descriptive words and try to incorporate them into my vocabulary. I especially love words that carry their own impact or words that sound like what they mean. When I’m writing poetry, I’m always exploring synonyms or different words to make the reading more interesting.

I must confess, however, that I am struggling to keep up with the latest word innovations that I hear in the media I listen to or read online. I feel like social media has created its own foreign language. I find myself running to Google on a regular basis to find out what things mean. I know different generations have their own vocabulary, and I don’t want to lose my edge of being the “cool Grandma”. However, I have not embraced “six-seven” as it’s just dumb in my old lady opinion. It doesn’t even have a real meaning! Ridiculousness!

I often get my news through podcasts so I have started making a list of words to look up later. Give yourself a little quiz to see how many of these words or phrases you know and understand. They are words I have encountered recently:

Virtue signaling

Rage baiting

Psyop

Astroturfing

Slop

Sycophant

Post-truth

Looksmaxxing

Cringe

Mogged

Word salad

Thirst traps

Rizz

Allyship

Intersectionality

Dark Woke

Sentrism

At least I have identified myself as a “boomer” and ignore the online buzz that boomers are all selfish money hogs who are preventing the younger generations from being able to purchase homes. And I don’t feel one speck of guilt when I hop in my RV and head down the road spending our hard-earned money as we go. Sorry, not sorry, Gen-Xers, Millennials, Gen-Zers, and Gen-Alphas. Someday we may pass our savings on, but in the meantime, you will thank us when we pay our own way into the nursing home!