Language is in a constant state of fluidity.
There, I started with something sensible for once. You know when you’re racking your brain and you realise you’re full of old expressions, catchphrases and adages that you’ve picked up along the way? Where do they all come from? How does someone uttering a sentence once suddenly become a phrase used hundreds of years later?
These days, it all comes from the Internet and lasts roughly about as long as the little orb’s attention span on a bad day. What is hilarious and prevalent one day is cringe and desperate the next. We need a more solid approach to this. Our lives are filled with throwaway matter so let’s bandage up 2026 by trying to create a brand new expression / phrase / something. I’ll be running a competition over the next few months and all being well, with the usual helpful contributions from Chris, we should be able to craft something exciting.
This month, we have five stunning entries to tantalise your verbal taste buds.
- Silicon valley, tin can alley – when someone loses all their wealth and is reduced to nothing but poverty
- Whatever next, Timothy? – a general expression to say when you don’t know what to say, even if there’s not a Timothy nearby
- I lost my hat on the treadmill of life – response to a question where you want to avoid the real answer and need to leave quickly
- Cough it up, wank bread – a work in progress (insults are hard)
- Sometimes you make the crinkle, sometimes the crinkle you make – when you want to sound wise without displaying any proper evidence of this
There we go. I await your feedback. I’ll also be taking any nominations in the comments section so if you have something you say to yourself that nobody else does, and you wish to share it with the world, then come on over like Shania Twain and let us know!