Tyrades! Am I Overthinking Slang?

As a writer, I can’t deny harboring an appreciation for the richness of slang, metaphors, similes and colloquialisms.

And yet…there’s something not quite rational about the agitators who force our language to evolve. (“Come on, participle! Crawl up on dry land! That gerund is beating you!”)

There is an undisputed utility to manufactured terms such as “gerrymander,” “carpetbagger” and “flyover country”; but other linguistic innovations have been more frivolous. (Society’s onetime fascination with “cutting a rug” and “bees’ knees” did little to prevent the offshoring of textile jobs or our curre...