A new meaning can appear from nowhere, becoming commonplace before moving into cliche and then into obsolescence. Now both seem tired, oven outdated. A tad sad perhaps. Not that we should accept Americanisms unreservedly. Corporate America, and increasingly British firms, uses words to hide the banishes on the unacceptable face of its capitalism.
Language is endlessly inventive.
Plenty of new words have been used recently to describe the battles between men and women and straight and gay. In Britain name-calling, like sticks and stones, hurts. Hip-hop culture, for example, sprays nigger around like a gangsta rapper's Uzi and gay groups talk of queer and dyke politics. Despite the freeing of the TV and radio airwaves to allow in the olks with their estuary Engfish and slang, civilisation has not yet crumbled. Thanks to John Maidment for scanning.