In a recent New York Times Magazine article, Nitsuh Adebe speaks with a linguist about the ways in which words evolve over time, noting recent shifts in the use of terms like “POV” and “aesthetic,” especially when used in social media posts. “How people use a language is what the language is, and most everything we do in an effort to steer one another’s usage—teaching grammar, mocking errors, writing columns—is just an exercise of social power,” writes Abebe. Compose a poem that incorporates a word or phrase that has gained a new meaning in contemporary use, possibly through the rapidly changing landscape of language mediated, distorted, or abbreviated in texting and social media. What sorts of ingenuity, misinterpretation, and customization propelled your selection from its original definition to a new one? How might using it in a new poetic context subject it to an additional layer of meaning?
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