ABYSSIEN

So raise a glass to teenage girls for their linguistic innovation. It expands our expressive vocabulary, giving us new words and modes of expression. Speakers may nostalgically look to a previous golden era of English, but the truth is that Shakespeare’s English is an abomination of Chaucer’s English, which is an abomination of Beowolf’s. Language is inherently unstable. It’s in a constant state of flux, made and remade—stretched, altered, broken down and rearranged—by its speakers every day. Rather than a sign of corruption and disorder, this is language in its full vitality—a living, evolving organism.

What if you knew you’d be the last to touch someone? If you were taking tickets, for example, at the theater, tearing them, giving back the raged stubs, you might take care to touch that palm, brush your fingertips along the life line’s crease.