And Urban Dictionary is regularly cited as a source in linguistics research, such as a 2015 paper by Natasha Shrikant on Indian American students. Fox Tree uses Urban Dictionary, along with other examples of “public dictionary websites” (like Wikipedia and ), to excavate the uses of like in storytelling. It allows researchers to track terms that are too recent or too niche to appear in establishment dictionaries, and to determine how people are using English online.įor example, one 2006 paper by communication expert Jean E. Whatever we might think of its vulgarity, Urban Dictionary is useful. While Urban Dictionary’s speed may be useful in a legal setting, some lexicologists believe that depending on a crowdsourced dictionary is risky. Urban Dictionary’s definition of to nut, for instance, has been brought up in a sexual harassment claim, and the meanings of jack were debated in a financial restitution case. More serious is the continued tradition of dictionary use in legal cases, where the interpretation of a single word can have grave consequences. Urban Dictionary is being used to determine the acceptability of vanity plate names in some U.S. And according to internet linguist Gretchen McCulloch’s much-touted new book Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language: “ IBM experimented with adding Urban Dictionary data to its artificial intelligence system Watson, only to scrub it all out again when the computer started swearing at them.” Its pages were saved to the Internet Archive more than 12,500 times between May 25, 2002, and October 4, 2019, with a steady increase over time. Urban Dictionary carries this legacy forward, and the site is likely to persist in some form. By 1785, Francis Grose’s Classic Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue extended the slang lexicon beyond the middle-class conception, adding terms such as bum fodder (for toilet paper). The slang dictionaries of the seventeenth century were considered useful for clueing readers into the language of thieves and cheats, which itself was part of an older tradition of exoticizing the language of the poor and criminal. But it also continues a long history of recording low-brow language: dictionaries of English slang have been around in some form for centuries. With its crowdsourced definitions and high speed of coinage, Urban Dictionary is very much a product of the internet age. "It's giving" can be used as a way to compare someone or something to another person or thing, or to positively describe the overall vibe of a person or thing.“IBM experimented with adding Urban Dictionary data to its artificial intelligence system Watson, only to scrub it all out again when the computer started swearing at them.” Here are the meanings of 16 slang terms that members of Gen Z are using in 2023. "What better way to become an influencer than to figure out some slang expression that can be spread and then traced back to you," Baugh said. Not only has social media become a new and efficient pathway for the spread of slang, it offers different incentives for the creation of new words. "Even though slang has always existed, the emergence of social media has created a situation where the potential for slang virality has increased," John Baugh, a linguist at Washington University in St. The rise of social media has further changed how - and how fast - slang spreads. "So much slang comes from African American English," he added. "Then, they allowed African American performers," he said, which exposed many viewers to a culture different from their own. " would have back-to-back music videos and every young person watched them," Leonard said. Leonard, a forensic linguist at Hofstra University in New York, told Insider. Slang once traveled solely through word-of-mouth, but the emergence of MTV in the 1990s fundamentally changed the speed at which slang expressions could spread outside of their communities, Robert A. Here are 16 slang terms, what they mean, and how to use them properly. Members of Gen Z are using a slew of new terms, such as "situationship" and "rizz." The speed slang spreads through social media poses a challenge for anyone trying to keep up.
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