It is said that the human mind would be pure chaos without language. Language provides structure and solidity to our every thought. It’s strange to imagine that without language, we would have no thoughts. Just raw needs, physical sensations and emotions. We wouldn’t even need a spoken or written language to corral our thoughts, just some sort of symbolic representation of concepts, objects, actions, emotions, memories. Sure, we could find our way to the center of the maze so we could get the cheese — because of pattern recognition. But could we imagine what the cheese would taste like, plan what we would do after our cheese-fest, or tell our friends about our cheese find? Prolly not.
And every time we think we’re coming up with a new word or expression, we’re prolly not. We’re just renaming a concept that’s been around for a long time, or mashing together several previously existing concepts. So take that “lit”, and “salty” and “O.G.” You’re only the latest version of “groovy”, “miffed” and “eminence grise.”
And that’s my final word on the subject.