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Part of How to Read Social Media Slang in Context
The six directions slang drifts in, and their usual order
Six directions social media slang moves in, from narrowing to ironic inversion, with the diagnostic for each and the rough order they arrive in.
Words do not change meaning at random. They change in a small number of directions, and each direction leaves a signature you can recognize without knowing anything about the particular word. That is useful, because the particular words go out of date and the directions do not.
This page sets out six patterns of change with the diagnostic for each, and the order in which a spreading term usually meets them: it starts narrow and, if it travels far enough, ends ironic or fossilized. No current term is used as an illustration. Any choice would be stale by the time you read it, and the pattern is the teachable part anyway; where an example helps, it is an older word whose change is already documented, from Old English corn to LOL, an internet term old enough to have a dated record.
What to take away
- Six directions cover most changenarrowing, broadening, softening, souring, ironic inversion, and shift of function.
- The direction usually tells you where the word is in its life, because the directions come in a rough order.
- Ironic inversion is the one that breaks a reader most badly, because the word still looks like itself.
- A shift of function, from noun to verb or from adjective to intensifier, is the earliest visible sign that a term is spreading.
The six directions
| Direction | What happens | How to recognize it |
|---|---|---|
| Narrowing | A general word takes one specific sense inside a group | The general sense still exists elsewhere and now reads as an outsider's use |
| Broadening | A specific word loses its conditions and applies to anything similar | Uses appear where the original conditions plainly do not hold, and nobody objects |
| Softening | A harsh word loses its edge through repetition | It survives in contexts where the harsh reading would be unacceptable |
| Souring | A neutral or positive word acquires contempt | It stops being used sincerely; sincere uses read as naive |
| Ironic inversion | The word is used to mean roughly its opposite | Tone carries the whole meaning; a literal reading produces nonsense |
| Shift of function | The word changes grammatical role | It appears in a slot its original part of speech could not fill |
These are not internet phenomena. They are the ordinary mechanisms cataloged under semantic change, running faster because the feedback loop is shorter and the audience is larger. Speed is the only novelty, and speed is enough to matter, because a word can complete a cycle before a reference work notices it started.
Six Directions of Slang Drift
Direction
- Narrowing
- General word, one group sense
- Broadening
- Specific word loses conditions
- Softening
- Harsh word loses its edge
- Souring
- Neutral word gains contempt
- Ironic inversion
- Used to mean the opposite
- Shift of function
- Changes grammatical role
What happens
- Narrowing
- General sense reads as outsider use
- Broadening
- Uses where conditions do not hold
- Softening
- Survives where harsh reading is unacceptable
- Souring
- Sincere uses read as naive
- Ironic inversion
- Literal reading produces nonsense
- Shift of function
- Fills a slot its part of speech cannot
How to recognize it
- Narrowing
- Broadening
- Softening
- Souring
- Ironic inversion
- Shift of function
The same directions in documented words
Linguists describe these moves under their own names, and the textbook examples make the patterns easy to see. Analyzing Language in Context, the University of Nevada, Las Vegas course text, in its chapter 13.1 "Methods of Semantic Change", lists generalization and specialization, also called widening and narrowing, as standard methods of change.
- Narrowing.Old English corn could refer to any type of grain; in the U.S. it now names one specific plant. Meat once meant any sort of food.
- Broadening.The Old English compound for "barley-building" became barn, which holds much more than barley, and brand names such as Band-Aid and Kleenex now stand for any adhesive bandage or tissue.
- Souring.Linguists call this pejoration. Lewd once simply meant someone not taught to read Latin; it now means crude.
- Softening.The textbook term is weakening: awesome used to mean something capable of inspiring awe, and most people who say "damn it" are not thinking of eternal hellfire. The opposite move, amelioration, turned Old English cniht, a boy or servant, into knight.
- Ironic inversion.Literally means "non-figuratively" for many speakers and the exact opposite for others, and the same course text notes that the figurative use goes back to the 1700s.
Online slang runs through the same moves; what changes is how quickly a term passes from one to the next.
One internet term, traced: LOL
LOL is old enough to have a record and common enough to have moved in several directions, so it shows the sequence on a real social media term.
- Narrow start.LOL, "laughing out loud", was first used almost exclusively on Usenet. The earliest recorded mention in that meaning is in a list of common online acronyms in the May 8, 1989 issue of the electronic newsletter FidoNews, according to the Oxford English Dictionary and the linguist Ben Zimmer.
- Broadening.It has since become widespread in other forms of computer-mediated communication and even face-to-face conversation, and the Oxford English Dictionary first listed it in March 2011.
- Softening and shift of function.While LOL originally meant laughing out loud, modern usage is commonly a way to soften statements. The linguist John McWhorter calls it "a marker of empathy" and "a marker of accommodation", the kind of item linguists call a pragmatic particle: a word that no longer names an action but marks a mood.
- Irony.The same modern usage commonly uses LOL for irony and as an indicator of second meanings, so a literal reading of it now produces exactly the misreading the inversion section below describes.
The rough order
Most terms that travel far enough follow a sequence. Not every term completes it, and a term can stop anywhere. The usual order runs:
- Narrowing.A word takes one specific sense inside a group.
- Broadening.Neighboring groups pick it up and apply it to anything roughly similar.
- Shift of function.It turns up as a verb or an intensifier, the first visible sign that it is spreading.
- Softening.Repetition wears off its edge, and it starts marking a mood rather than naming a thing.
- Souring.The original group starts hearing it as an outsider's word, and sincere use begins to read as naive.
- Ironic inversion.It is used mainly to mock people who use it, before it disappears or fossilizes in a fixed phrase.
Order a Term Travels
- 1Coined or borrowed inside a group
- 2Broadening by context-learned adopters
- 3Function shift into new slots
- 4Souring or softening by audience
- 5Ironic inversion once common enough
- 6Fossilization in a fixed phrase
The second step surprises people: a word broadens because adopters cannot see the original conditions, not because they are careless.
They see the word used and infer the rule from available uses, and only traveled uses are available, so those become the definition. This is the same selection problem throughout this site, described for formats under memes and virality.
Diagnosing an inversion
Ironic inversion is worth its own procedure, because it is the one that produces confident misreadings.
- Read the sentence literally. If the literal reading is banal or absurd, suspect inversion.
- Look at what the speaker does next. Inverted use is almost always followed by something that would be strange after a sincere use.
- Look at who is being addressed. Inversion is a membership signal, so it appears where the audience is assumed to share the reading, and a speaker who moves between audiences will switch it off, which is ordinary code-switching rather than inconsistency.
- Check for a marker. Inverted use often carries a spelling, a punctuation habit or a capitalization pattern that sincere use does not.
If the checks disagree, the honest conclusion is that you cannot tell. Written text has no tone. A reader not in the room is missing exactly the information the speakers used.
This limit on reading archived material is permanent, not a gap in anyone's skill. The gaps it creates are the subject of internet culture archives.
A worked shape, without a word
Take an abstract term, X, that starts as the name of a specific practice inside a hobby.
At first, using X correctly requires knowing the practice. Then X appears in neighboring groups, applied to anything roughly similar, because the neighbors learned it from a joke and not from the hobby. Someone uses it as a verb, then as an intensifier, at which point it has stopped naming a practice at all and started marking a mood.
The original hobbyists now hear X and read the speaker as an outsider. A period follows in which X is used mainly to mock people who use X. Then it is either gone or fossilized in a fixed phrase, meaning nothing on its own.
Every stage in that sequence is a different word doing a different job, and a glossary with one entry for X is wrong at five of the six stages. What the entry needs instead, field by field, is set out under social media slang.
Why the direction matters to a reader
Knowing the direction tells you what to do when you meet a term you do not know.
If it looks narrowed, ask which group. If it looks broadened, do not trust any precise definition you find; precision belongs to the earlier sense. If it looks soured, be careful using it at all.
If it looks inverted, do not use it until you have seen it used correctly several times by people who clearly belong. If it has shifted function, expect the meaning to change soon, because function shifts run ahead of sense shifts.
That last one is the practical payoff. A term being used as a verb for the first time is a signal that it is spreading. Spreading terms are the ones a writer most needs to date carefully rather than assert about, for the reasons set out under platform timelines.
Common questions
Can a word move in two directions at once?
Yes, in different communities, at the same moment. That is the normal state of a spreading term and the reason a single definition is usually wrong somewhere.
Do dead terms come back?
Some do, with a new sense attached, usually as a deliberate period reference. The revived sense is a different word wearing an old spelling, and it deserves its own entry.
Is broadening a corruption?
No. It is what happens to every widely used word in every language. Calling it corruption is a claim about who owns the word, and the answer to that is nobody.
How do I know which direction a term took if I arrived late?
Often you cannot. You can see the current sense and whatever earlier uses survived in searchable places, and the earlier uses that survived are not a fair sample. Say what you observed and stop there.
