Have you ever found yourself reminiscing about the words we once used every day, only to realize how much our language has changed?
Over the past thirty years, English has transformed alongside our lives, shaped by technology, globalization, and cultural shifts. The internet and social media have given us words like selfie, hashtag, and meme, while abbreviations such as LOL (laugh out loud), FOMO (fear of missing out), and DM (direct message) have seamlessly woven themselves into our everyday conversations.
Some of the newer words that have entered our dictionaries reflect the ways our lives have changed. Binge-watch (watching multiple episodes in one sitting), ghosting (suddenly ignoring someone), and hangry (angry due to hunger) all describe experiences that have become second nature in modern life.
Words like deepfake (synthetically altered videos or images) and metaverse (a virtual-reality space) highlight just how much technology has shaped our recent world.
And then there are words like brainfog and analog. Brainfog, describing that hazy, forgetful feeling we’ve all had, became especially well-known in recent years, finding its place in our collective consciousness. Analog, once the only reality we knew, now stands as a nostalgic reminder of a simpler time before the digital age took over.
Yet, as new words emerge, some beloved ones fade into obscurity, leaving only memories of a different era.
Think of floppy disk, a once-revolutionary storage device, now a relic of our past. Or beepers, those tiny devices that once connected us in an era before smartphones dominated our world. And who can forget cassette tapes, those magical ribbons of music that required a pencil to rewind when they got tangled?
As language continues to evolve, we become aware that words are more than just letters strung together—they hold our memories, our experiences, and the ever-changing world we live in. And while we embrace the new, there’s always a certain warmth in looking back at the words that once defined our lives. That’s how it is at The Heritage School North Campus, the best CBSE school in Dehradun. We are proud of our past and we eagerly embrace the glorious future.