Write an 'entertaining article' about which words you think might disappear within the next 100 years

There is never any ballyhoo when words in our language disappear.

Spot the odd one out. As great as it would be if ‘ballyhoo’ was used in our language today, it has disappeared so much to the extent that it took several ‘Googles’ to completely define its full meaning. There’s another one - ‘Google’. If we slipped it into a conversation 50 years ago, no matter who we were talking to, the guaranteed response would be a blank face. This word is so common now that the majority of people around the world understand it, yet it has only existed for a short time. But how do these words shift so much without us realizing? There wasn’t a set date when people decided to remove ‘ballyhoo’ from circulation, yet there must have been a reason that it was changed for more contemporary vocabulary such ‘commotion’ and, more recently, ‘hype’.

It’s strange to think that, in perhaps as soon as 50 years’ time, we will have a new range of words to get to grips with, and some of our words that we use every day might be forgotten or replaced, but which ones have sticking power?

Clearly with the invention of the mobile phone and internet (of which most of us confidently declare “I caaaaan’t live without it!”) there is a whole new dictionary of words that have become second-nature to the English language. When phones first developed the texting function, the dual-function keyboard meant that it took a while to type out a standard message, hence the invention of shortened words using acronyms, initialism and contractions such as ‘LOL’, ‘G2G’ and ‘coz’ (which are, like, totes uncool now). With the further improvements in this technology (such as the touch-screen), typing on mobile phones is merely a matter of *tap tap tap* before a long essay is synchronically sent to the recipient who awaits an almost immediate reply. In theory, this means that these words will disappear as there is no potential for them. Moreover, now that they are so widely used, they have an effect much like when your mum starts to listen to ‘Daft Punk’ or ‘Eminem’; they lose a lot of credit and the average age of their user-ship spikes.

Which words will disappear? From trends we have seen in the past, our swearword vocabulary is surely to, not so much disappear, but change in terms of what will become acceptable to use. The context of our future suggests that perhaps the casual use of racist terms such as ‘n*gger’, or sexist terms such as ‘c*nt’ – which are often referred to as ‘the worst’ swear words – are likely to become diluted with their over-use and the modernising society, much like religious terms such as ‘damn’ have become more acceptable to use since the decrease in the church’s influence. Having said this, it is likely to take a long time for older generations to accept this semantic shift – using the intensifier ‘bloody’ at the dinner table on Sunday afternoon is likely to go unnoticed by everyone except granny, sitting in the corner and choking on a roast potato as she declares, ‘if I said that in my day, I would have got a slap on the wrist’.

It’s hard to tell what words we will still be using in the future, but they are likely to be ones that are used by all ages, because they are less prone to becoming unfashionable with a currently wide and varied usage. Words such as ‘cool’ and ‘bloke’ are an example of this because, unlikely the travesties which are the words ‘twerk’ and ‘yolo’, they are already used by older generations, and people have thus accepted them as mainstream. Whereas the younger generation are likely to feel incredibly uncomfortably if their mum starts to shout ‘yolo’ or tries to twerk, because the words were implemented by young and credible figures, therefore they were never meant for the oldies.