Etymology
a composite graphic including a portrait of author Adam Aleksic wearing a white T-shirt and black shirt tied at the waist; slang words skibidi, rizz, sigma and 67; and the book cover of Algospeak: How Social Media is Transforming the Future of Language
Portrait by Alefiyah Gandhi via Penguin Random House

Best of: How social media is changing language, with @EtymologyNerd

If you have young people in your life, you might've heard them use words such as skibidi (SKIH-bih-dee) or rizz or sigma. Maybe that's mumbo-jumbo to you, as mumbo-jumbo was to someone else in the past. But Adam Aleksic says that's just how language evolves. And as we continue through the internet age — specifically the era of short form video — the rate of change in our language is only going to accelerate.

Aleksic, known online as @EtymologyNerd, writes about this in his new book, Algospeak: How Social Media Is Transforming the Future of Language.

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