Change, they say, is inevitable; growth, however, is optional. In no other human endeavour is this axiom as visible as in language us(ag)e. Why, the Oxford University Press publishes annually the most effective word of the year.
In 2023, it was the Gen Z term "rizz" which meant the 'X' factor that makes one the ultimate charmer. In 2024, "brain rot" questioned the excessive consumption of low quality online material. Well, in 2025, a Tiktoker, named Jools LeBron, redefined the traditional "demure" to mean its absolute antonym, that is, sophisticated smarty pants! Apparently, that is how she perceives herself!
Beyond such slang (there is a regular online #has to be thus, right?# dictionary defining its usages, by the way!) and the WhatsApp-y "lmao" and "lol" and "ig" (no worries, nothing to do with the police! It simply means, 'i guess' which grammatically should have been 'igs', that is, 'i guess so'. Who is afraid of grammar these days though?), computers is another field that constantly re-constructs, re-constitutes, re-structures language!
Oh, such jokes as the dumbo secretary of the 'Admin' 'burning' a c.d. and afraid to keep a cat, given the 'mouse' her boss wants her to get urgently are loooong passe.
Now the field has encroached on literature and zoology. Don't you believe me? Okay, lemme give ya eg's! Kafka! What does the word mean to you? A great German author, right? Or an interesting title by the "in'' litterateur, Haruki Murasaki-san of Japan, whom the Gen Z types love, okay?
What does the word 'zookeeper' mean in common parlance? Somebody who overlooks the Rajiv Gandhi zoo at Katraj near Pune, right?
Well, ask any software type, and he/she would come up with meanings of these words which initially sure would appear to be sheer gobbledy-gook!
'Kafka' now refers to an open source online software platform, and 'zookeeper' in this 'Kafka' manages metadata! Well, it is the ex-Puneite, Neha Narkhede, who has thus re-named the two terms. Why she chose these two, she alone would know, I suppose! The Lord be thanked though that it is not 'Shakespeare' and 'guava' or 'Kalidasa' and 'kuttakam'!!
In brief, language changes, and how! Such language changes are more and more coterie terms, moreover. May be, one of the reasons it could be why communication breaks down, and often!
Pratima@The worst example of a breakdown of communication, however, is the Pahalgam Massacre where innocents died because a handful of terrifying terrorists, extremists actually, who insisted upon their "bloody" (in all senses of this term) language alone!
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