When I was growing up in Oklahoma, we used words and phrases that were unique to that area. Some of the words we used hadn’t ever been heard in other parts of the country. That’s true with any region of the country — they use terminology that just isn’t used anywhere else.
I’ve lived in countries where neighboring communities didn’t even speak the same language, and if they did speak the “same” language, their terminology was so different they couldn’t communicate.
A few days ago, someone mentioned cells. I immediately thought they were talking about their phones. Actually the conversation was about the coronavirus outbreak. That got me to thinking about how words have changed… it seems like you could use exactly the same words and the conversation using those words in 1970 would have a completely different meaning than a conversation using those words in 2020.
Cell is a good example — when I was growing up, cell meant a tiny little part of your body, or in Oklahoma, it was a common term for a jail. But when I heard the word a few days ago, my brain said, cell… oh, that’s what you call your phone.
Cloud is another one of those words — when I was a kid, we use to lay on the ground and imagine pictures in the sky by looking at the clouds. Clouds were those things in the sky made up of particles of condensed vapor suspended in the atmosphere. Today, cloud immediately brings to mind something associated with the Internet. It somehow allows online processing and storage of data when its not on your computer… I’m not sure anyone knows what and where it really is….
When I lived in Marysville, we lived on the corner and my friend lived down the block. A block was (usually) a square piece of land with houses on it and streets ran in front and back and down the sides of the block. Today we don’t live on a block. We used to find people by saying they lived in the 1200 block of such and such street, or something like that. That term isn’t used much anymore. I had building blocks when I was a kid… today, block most likely means preventing someone from contacting you on a social network, like Twitter or Facebook. Same thing with “friend.” Friend used to be someone you really liked, now it’s more likely to mean adding another name to a list of contacts on some social network.
We used to “hook up” a new stove or some other appliance when it was installed… today, “hook up” usually means to meet someone….
Anyhow, you get the point — you have to forgive us older people for being slow or a little out of touch sometimes… we not only had to learn the language, we keep having to re-learn it every few years.
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