Express Yourself
Oxford says the origins of ‘yikes’ are unknown, but could it be traced back as far as Latin?
It’s a yikes from me, dog. That aging comedian’s most recent tweet is a big yikes in my book. Excuse me, sir, could you please refrain from being so extremely yikes? That’s the way (aha aha) I yikes it.
Yikes is an Internet 101 word. And, as often happens when a word becomes inescapable, it has broken out of its original niche; ask anyone who positions themselves among the “extremely online” and they’ll tell you it’s so much more than just a cry of horror or surprise. The sentences I give above (alright, maybe bar the last one) demonstrate the…
Express Yourself
Shame is probably the biggest obstacle for writers. Here’s how to confront it.
I’ve had a lot of lives as a writer. I started out as a poet. At 26, I was in grad school for fiction. By 29, I freelanced personal essays and worked as an editor at an alt-weekly, writing art criticism. At 31, I wrote my first book, a memoir. By 33, I was writing widely on gender and culture. At 34, I wrote my second book, a reported memoir. By 37, I’d tried my hand at my first episode of television. And now, at 40, I’m working on my first feature film script.
Some people might accuse me of…
Express Yourself
Our need to give things simple names leaves out a lot of nuance
“When you actually examine the range of life on Earth, it takes a lot of acrobatics to sort it into a single hierarchy with humans at the top.” — Lulu Miller, Why Fish Don’t Exist
I wonder how many of humanity’s mistakes stem from using the wrong words. Language is our superpower, but it’s also a weapon. These days, a prominent person can simply tweet a message and chaos can follow.
Words help us arrange our thoughts into a meaningful pattern. The trouble is, every word we know is a word created over time. …
Express Yourself
There’s something to be said about saying nothing
As I recently looked back at all I’d endured in 2020 — and in the years before it — I was proud to exclaim that not only had I survived, I was thriving! Because of a series of tough decisions that had to be made as my family and I prepared for at least two years of a raging pandemic, racial and political turmoil, and economic instability, we ended the year on an upswing. …
Express Yourself
Redundant letters and inconsistent spelling. How does anyone get anything done with this?
Sometimes, I have this wild idea about updating English — taking it apart, tidying it up, and making it all a bit more consistent. Do we, for example, really need C, K, and Q? Three variants of the same sound, like remnants from an earlier draft that should be edited out. “Tick” and “duck” contain C and K, as if we had to invite both in case one felt left out.
Languages emerge organically as ideas from other cultures are grafted onto existing structures. We owe much of our alphabet to the Romans who took it from the Etruscans in…
Express Yourself
Linguists analyze the lengths we take to avoid seeming rude
“What’s the magic word?” our parents asked when we stomped into the room demanding they help us find a missing toy. Over time, we learned that our requests could be fulfilled more expediently if we offered up a “please” without being prompted. Hey, what a neat trick!
But then we reached school age and found ourselves berated for breaking other mysterious rules, like pronouncing “give me” as “gimme” or repeating one of the four-letter words we’d heard bandied about. …
Express Yourself
You have nothing to prove. Sometimes, the best thing to do is walk away.
A couple of months ago I wrote an essay about my experience growing up as a light-skinned Black woman in the United States.
I wanted to speak honestly about internalized racism and how it has manifested throughout my life. My hope was that by turning a critical eye inward and engaging with my flawed journey — still flawed, by the way— I might be able to offer a road map for people working through similar issues.
It was a tough piece, and I received a wide variety of responses. Some were complimentary. One of the first was from a mother…
Express Yourself
A brief investigation into gendered language
In 2007, while browsing the humor section of your local bookshop in search of a low-effort Christmas gift, you might have come across a book called Real Men Don’t Say Splendid: A Lexicon of Unmanliness. If you were curious whether the book’s title was supposed to be ironic, you might have plucked it off the shelf and scanned its first page, which reads:
We all know instinctively that there are some words real men just shouldn’t say, no matter what the circumstances — words that make a man seem a little less manly when he says them. […] Men, for…
Express Yourself
Other languages have polite second-person pronouns. English used to have one, too.
If you studied French at school, you may recall the mild culture shock that comes with learning the second-person pronouns. Tu and vous both translate as “you,” but can’t be used interchangeably. Provided you’re speaking to one person, you have the rather dicey task of assessing how formal you should be with your addressee, taking into account their age and status, as well as how familiar you are with them. This would seem cut and dry if you were talking to a toddler or a tax collector, but consider, for example, a co-worker who is close to you in age…
Express Yourself
Words can inspire reflection and growth, instead of prompting attacks
A few months ago, I wrote an essay about why I dislike the term “differently abled.” As an Autistic person, I find it unhelpful and condescending to hide the word “disabled” behind softening euphemisms like that one. I also explained that the majority of disabled people feel the way I do about the term.
In the same piece, I also noted that the use of words like “differently abled” are revealing in a useful way; they indicate to me that a person is uncomfortable with disability, or is unfamiliar with the disability rights movement. Knowing that allows me to meet…
