above : The saviours of the English language...

I need to make a confession, one which is massively ridiculous, but I cannot live any longer with this lie. I, and none of my friends, invented the word chillax. I honestly thought we had a strong claim to this one, but after some research, it turns out it was in circulation for 3 years prior to us using it.

I know my group of friends didn’t invent chillax, but we had been using it for years before it became common parlance. I did some research, and it turns out that in all my communications, it arrives December 2006. That to me, felt like the birth of the word. However, doing some research into slang, I could find definitions of the phrase in 2003.

It was kind of sad for me. It was nice to think that we had created something like this, but turns out we didn’t. I would like to also absolve my friends from the ‘thinking they invented it’ thing, because that was just me really. I once, half heartedly mentioned the idea at work, and was roundly shamed! The more I thought about it, the more ridiculous an idea it became. I invented the Pen with Built In Post It notes...so no chance I could invent something like chillax. I was a problem solver, not a free wheeling Blue Sky thinker (invented by me in 1995...Ok, so I didn't invent that either). 

This situation did make me wonder, how could such a thing just pop into existence? Someone must have invented it.  And it was more than likely to be a child. Adults are comfortable in the language they have, and more words just don’t help. I cannot understand the language of children on the bus these days. It is just noise. For example, the word mandem has been in regular use on the 271 on the Holloway Road. I didn’t know what this meant so looked it up on Urban Dictionary, but I sincerely doubt mandem came from the latin

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Mandem

Language is always involving, I love the idea that words get promoted to the Oxford English Dictionary, and then dropped when they fall out of use.   But I love the Urban Dictionary too. Giving direction in these cloudy language times. I recommend pressing the random word button, guaranteed to make you laugh.

- Anand