The evolution of language on the Web is actually a captivating one, and future linguists shall be shaking their head on the American Dialect Society’s selection for 2022 phrase of the yr: “-ussy.”
The “-ussy” suffix is a callback to the phrase “pussy” and has exploded on the Web in recent times. “-ussy” was a finalist for the American Dialect Society’s Phrase of the 12 months title alongside “quiet quitting,” “rizz,” and “Slava Ukraine” which interprets to “Glory to Ukraine.” The suffix is often mixed with a phrase to type a portmanteua with a brand new that means. One frequent software is combing “-ussy” with “boy” to create “bussy,” which might now confer with a person’s anus.
“The collection of the suffix ‘-ussy’ highlights how creativity in new phrase formation has been embraced on-line in venues like TikTok,” stated Ben Zimmer in an announcement. Zimmer is a linguist, columnist for the Wall Avenue Journal, and chair of the American Dialect Society’s New Phrases Committee. “The playful suffix builds off the phrase ‘pussy’ to generate new slang phrases. The method has been so productive these days on social media websites and elsewhere that it has been dubbed ‘-ussification.’”
One of many earliest functions of the ‘-ussy’ suffix was in a meme involving Mr. Krabs from the cartoon Spongebob Squarepants set to a tune from the now defunct text-to-singing app Ditty.it. Within the video, a female voice sings “Mr. Krabs is one thicc bih. Let me see that krussy,” combining Krabs and ‘-ussy’ to confer with the character’s massive derriere. The meme format spawned a wave of comparable movies within the early 2010s utilizing completely different characters and other people for the punchline.
The American Dialect Society’s Phrase of the 12 months provides to the rising checklist of Web-related phrases that went viral in 2022. Oxford topped the meme phrase “goblin mode” as Phrase of the 12 months, whereas Merriam-Webster named “gaslight”—a psychological well being time period that noticed traction on social media this yr—as its phrase of the yr.
