When Tony Thorne first started researching slang, he was largely on his own. This was in the ’80s, when, according to Thorne, the academic community “virtually ignored” slang as a part of linguistics.

Content moderation is changing the way we speak to each other, for better or worse. On TikTok, we say "le dollar bean" instead of "lesbian" because of a perceived ban on the word; we refer to suicide ...

Internet slang terms like "boop" and "chef's kiss" were added to major dictionaries in 2024, reflecting the evolution of language. Experts suggest autocorrect may contribute to declining spelling ...

Every time a new slang word gets coined on the Internet, linguist Adam Aleksic is thrilled. “It’s definitely good for me in that I stay in business,” says Aleksic, who studies the origins of words and ...

This excerpt from Adam Aleksic’s Algospeak: How Social Media Is Transforming the Future of Language has been abridged for online publication. The book is out on July 15th. The modern-­day incel is ...