1482: MeToo as a Verb (LITW 8) Jan 2, 2019
The # MeToo movement has since done a lot to highlight language-use, but the post today doesn't relate to PC language. Although certainly not exclusive to this word, MeToo eventually became a verb, but what this shows is not only the manner in which not only a phrase like 'me too' becomes one part of speech, but how it becomes a single word. No doubt this was helped by the commonality of the phrase in a variety of contexts, but also it was removed of distinct linguistic context as it is used in a hashtag. Once it is used as a hashtag, it doesn't need to fit into a sentence in the same way as another phrase would. For evidence, here is a tweet from Lena Dunham, though her assessment of the grammar is wrong.
This is Linguistics in in the Wild #8. Don’t forget to vote here before the 1,500th Word Facts blog-post.
