One of the most beautiful and sometimes confusing aspects of language is its ability to evolve. These evolutions typically take place over decades as the way in which we speak changes, allowing words to fit where they wouldn’t have years prior, and sometimes even making room for new words to spring up based on some cultural phenomenon or another. There’s also the possibility that, through this process of evolution, a forgotten word can resurface after years of lying in a near-dormant state, finding usage only within specialized groups of individuals.
Earlier today, The Wall Street Journal published an article surrounding a recent conference held by the American Dialect Society, an event that involved a vote for the word of the year. This year saw sweeping changes from the contests of the past, as a great deal of attention was placed on a category devoted entirely to hashtags, used on Twitter or other notable social media forums. This grouping saw great success, and ended up producing the hashtag that went on to claim the Word of the Year title: #blacklivesmatter.
But there were plenty of runners-up in the contest, and they didn’t all follow hashtags. From words that society seems to have a love/hate relationship with like “bae,” to “normcore,” which the ADS defines as an “‘anti-fashion’ trend of adopting an intentionally ordinary, inexpensive personal style from cheap off-the-shelf brands.” But out of the long list of hopeful words, one stood out among the rest: salty, which won the title of word most likely to succeed.
As the Wall Street Journal article suggests, usage of salty can be traced back to 19th century “rough-and-tumble sailors, called ‘salts’ because of their life on the sea.” In the years following, salty underwent a number of changes. It wasn’t until the 1930s, when the phrase “jump salty” started to shape the word into what we know it to mean today. The word’s most recent changes were attributed to the fighting game community by Pearl Shavzin of Hunter College, who observed the word to “[appear] as a term to mock someone’s frustration in coming up short competitively, not just in a video game,” which sounds about right to me.
It looks like during all those years when we were clunking quarters into arcade cabinets and slapping buttons to chuck plasma at one another, we were also playing the quiet role of lexical necromancers. Keep up the good work, everyone!
For a more in-depth overview of the evolution of “salty,” as well as to check out the entire original article, feel free to follow the link below.
Source: The Wall Street Journal, thanks to Wulfsten for bringing this to our attention!
