1188: Closed Lexical Classes / "Slash" Mar 11, 2018

There are many different parts of speech, also called lexical class; some are open meaning that people can create words that belong to that class fairly easily, such as nouns, verbs, and adjectives, but closed lexical classes rarely change over time at all. Things like conjunctions, prepositions, pronouns, and articles haven't really changed in the last 800 years in English, some going back even twice as long. However, every so often something will change. The reason for this is that unlike nouns which are needed to represent lots of different things, conjunctions and other closed lexical classes already contain enough words to cover semantic needs. However, every so often one will fill a new role and catch on, such as the conjunction 'slash'. This only came about with the rise of typing, and was further reinforced through texting. Earlier—and still today—people word express certain dualities such as having the same person be a friend as well as a coworker with 'and', but now many people use 'slash' i.e. "she is my friend/coworker". Moreover, a habit from texting was borrowed into speech wherein a person writes two unrelated statements back-to-back e.g. "I went to the cinema/I'm hungry" meaning it is not only a replacement for 'and' but also has its own separate function. Perhaps one day people will consider it just as normal as any other well-established conjunction.
Make sure to check out the new Word Facts Video: https://youtu.be/MuEqaI7W0hA
Support Word Facts on Patreon for new things and to help make the content better: https://www.patreon.com/wordfacts.