Enga mellom fjella

Neologisms

I commented to SusanFarmer: "TV? I watched a Thai series where one character (a ghost for 20 years) mentions "television" to a young man who laughs saying he hadn't heard that word since his father died. Folks watch on monitors and screens nowadays? The ghost apparently died holding his walkman with 1990s music. The young man had no idea what that was!

I absolutely loved "He's coming to me".

I'm thinking of watching Nordic Noir (2010s) now on you-tube (2005) on my chromebook (2011). All neologisms that someone from the 1990s might find amusing."

I should think about this as words, expressions, symbols come in and out of use or change meanings, sometimes postive to negative or the reverse.

Like the Dixie flag (actually a military flag from Northern Virginia). IMHO, it's actually a beautiful flag. But growing up in the North it just meant "Southern" or perjoritively "hick" and later "NASCAR". Of course, it had other not-so-innocent meanings ... and it's usage nowadays has taken on a sinister tone along with it's symbol of a defeated racist nation.

Rationally it's quite a symbolic flag (13 stars, simple design) but its origins and misusage tarnish it.

Same with the ancient swastika that the NAZIs subverted or inverted religious symbols.

But neologisms are different in the sense that they describe what didn't exist or existed without a word for it. Like plate tectonics (1915) in geology.

The industrial revolution and tech revolution have hundreds of words that we take for granted not realizing how recent they are. Even my grandmother (born 1892) may have known the word "automobile" growing up but no one had one. By the time she died in 1985 we had "disco" and "walkmans" (1977).

I use the internet every day not pausing to think that I didn't grow up with it or that few under 30 in America have never been without it.

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