Over spring break, I learned a new abbreviation that apparently has been circulating for some time without my knowledge. "Adorbs." Clearly, it's fabulous, but when I immediately took to it, my friends looked at me like a mother who just friended her own offspring on Facebook.
Let me explain. A week ago I wouldn't have done this. My text messages are fully punctuated. I care that, according to the Associated Press, "email" recently shed its hyphen. These are the things that keep me up at night — the nonsensical phrase "intensive purposes," the wrong "there," an umlaut added for pizzazz with no regard to pronunciation (you're not cool, fancy restaurants).
Naturally, I was not the first to integrate the initialisms of the Internet age into my lexicon. I get that some of them are ironic and funny, but really who needs an abbreviation for a phrase they don't even use in its totality? (LOL, I mean you.)
"So why would you, of all things, abreve?" you may ask. (I know you're asking this.) Well, aside from the esses and gees, it's because now I can do so with official sanction: In its latest edition, released Thursday, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) added, among others, LOL, OMG and FYI to the dictionary. And if the OED can get with the times, then I cn 2.
Now, first of all, don't get all holier-than-thou at the people down at the OED. No, they don't just make up words when they're running low or because the dictionary is getting a little stale. Our language, like any, is a living, changing one, and the dictionary is its diary. We don't use a given word because some editor decided to write it down; that editor documents a word because we already use it. If the dictionary kept out words for being too young, it wouldn't be a very good record of our language — not for future generations about where words came from, nor for non-native speakers about how they're culturally used.
If there's anyone to berate about the addition of Internetisms into our vocabularies, it's We the People who popularized them.
But I'm not so sure there is. Many of the now-respected elements of our lexicon were once considered bastardizations of "proper" English. An orange used to be called a norange. The word "okay" derived from Boston slang. "Blog" is an abbreviation of "weblog," which itself is a word that didn't exist until recently.
We are only aware of so many etymologies and obsolete word usages because of the careful analysis of thousands of documents. The current dictionary editors are simply making the workload lighter for word enthusiasts to come. They're archivists working for the future, not gatekeepers working for the present, so we may as well let them archive thoroughly.
Besides, if clinging statically to old versions of our language really makes it more proper, then when is the cutoff? Before the Internet? Before the Americas? Before the Great Vowel Shift?
I heart the English language as much as the next guy (heart |härt| v. to love. Yours truly, the 2011 OED), and sure, last week I was of the vocal opinion that the compulsion to cut off one syllable of fully pronounceable words is what's dumbing down our generation. Next week, I'll probably be back in that boat. But for now, I say, what's so offensive about adorbs? (NOTHING. IT'S PERFECT.) You say WTF; I say Winning the Future.
P.S. At the same time, excess is not a thing I encourage, especially excess in the name of brevity. I got your Facebook message, Leonard Carmichael Society, and while I'm all in favor of riding the wave as you so obviously are trying to do, "FWOYDA" (Faculty Waits on You Dinner and Auction) is pushing it.
