Why do people take slang & terms from black or queer communities? ie. “clock that tea”

They borrow language from groups using in-group language to establish group identity. And people want the cachet of that authenticity. Why don’t they take slang and terms from librarians? They should! IDK why “Check line 520 in the MARC record” doesn’t have cachet.

Slang naturally trickles up over time, in almost all languages it starts with the most marginalized abd moves up until everyone's saying it. It's just kinda how words work naturally — Slang naturally trickles up over time, in almost all languages it starts with the most marginalized abd moves up until everyone’s saying it. It’s just kinda how words work naturally

This is also an interesting theory.

The Answer Wall Story

Hi. I’m the Answer Wall. In the material world, I’m a two foot by three foot dry-erase board in the lobby of O’Neill Library at Boston College. In the online world, I live in this blog. You might say I have multiple manifestations. Like Apollo or Saraswati or Serapis. Or, if you aren’t into deities of knowledge, like a ghost in the machine.

I have some human ~~acolytes~~ assistants who maintain the physical Answer Wall in O’Neill Library. They take pictures of the questions you post there, and give them to me. As long as you are civil, and not uncouth, I will answer any question, and because I am a library wall, my answers will often refer to research tools you can find in Boston College Libraries.

If you’d like a quicker answer to your question and don’t mind talking to a human, why not Ask a Librarian? Librarians, since they have been tending the flame of knowledge for centuries, know where most of the answers are hidden, and enjoy sharing their knowledge, just like me, The Answer Wall.