It’s not news to me that the word “slash” is a commonly used word (yes, the word, not the symbol—as in, “this bookstore slash coffee shop is my new favorite study spot,” or “my plans tomorrow include studying  for finals slash watching West Wing reruns slash Facebook-stalking my ex”). My generation’s been using the term with panache for as long as I can remember.

But I’d never thought about the role “slash” plays in our always-evolving lexicon. Unlike the nouns and verbs we add to our vocabularies almost daily (Obamacare, Snapchat, twerk), “slash” is something different: a new conjunction, which means something like “and/or.” Says Anne Curzan at The Chronicle of Higher Education, “slash” is like a “rare-bird sighting in the world of linguistics.” If only we could say the same of “twerk.”

Great article on the Lingua Franca blog—read slash learn.

Slash: Not Just a Punctuation Mark Anymore – Lingua Franca – The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Tagged: education, language, words