Words change

By Linda Cicoira

You’re doing everything right to maintain a youthful appearance. People guess you are 10 or 20 years younger than you really are. But somehow, when you speak, all that goes to the wayside because you haven’t updated your vocabulary.

If you still call your pants “dungarees,” you were likely born in the 1930s. If you refer to your refrigerator as an “icebox,” as my grandfather did, you are even older.

Here’s one that surprised me. If you call your bag a pocketbook, you are old. It’s okay to call it a purse or a handbag. But in reality, a “pocketbook” was a small item in the 1600s that could fit in one’s pocket. It held coins, paper money, or banknotes.

Using the term “creme rinse” for the conditioner one uses on hair after shampooing is also quite dated. I heard someone say that the other day. One can no longer find such an item on the store shelf. And marijuana is not “pot.” It is weed or cannabis.

People who work on an airplane are not “stewardesses.” They are flight attendants. They have been called the latter for many decades.

Merriam-Webster lists a “baddie” as a confident, stylish, and attractive woman. “Sigma” is a person who is coolly self-assured, independent, and driven. Both are currently acceptable.

An outdated word is “twattle,” which means to gossip. That was a new one to me. “Snoutfair” is a good-looking person from the 1500s. I like that one and think it should be reinstated.

The word “Whippersnapper” will age one in a second. It is used by the established when referring to a younger, inexperienced, overly confident, and disrespectful person.

Digital culture and AI have made language evolve faster than ever. In 2026, some new additions have been “Brain Rot,” the feeling of consuming too much social media leading to a loss of focus; “Rage Bait,” content posted with the deliberate intention of boosting engagement; “Slop,” low-quality online content or art usually generated by artificial intelligence; and “Delulu,” short for delusional; used playfully to describe unrealistic or overly optimistic thinking.

Perhaps you are guilty of “Doomscrolling,” which is the continuous searching of enormous amounts of upsetting online news.

Regardless of what words you use, one phrase used by a former WESR radio announcer will never get old or out of date. “Every day is a beautiful day on the Eastern Shore!”