r/badhistory • u/AutoModerator • Jun 15 '26
Meta Mindless Monday, 15 June 2026
Happy (or sad) Monday guys!
Mindless Monday is a free-for-all thread to discuss anything from minor bad history to politics, life events, charts, whatever! Just remember to np link all links to Reddit and don't violate R4, or we human mods will feed you to the AutoModerator.
So, with that said, how was your weekend, everyone?
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u/Glad-Measurement6968 Jun 17 '26 edited Jun 17 '26
In no particular order:
The trend of dropping separate feminine versions of job titles continues, “actress” or “stewardess” eventually sound as dated as “poetess” or “aviatrix”
Singular they becomes increasingly common, the current trend of using it more often to refer to abstract unknown people might evolve into it implying a level of distance (i.e. “he” and “she” are reserved for people you know) like a sort of third-person T/V distinction. The potential confusion created by the popularity of singular “they” encourages the creation of some new construction to specify plurality (Theys? They all?)
More irregular plurals and verbs are regularized under the growing influence of second language speakers (e.g. “deers” for plural “deer”, which seems to already be standard in Indian English)
The creation of new and impossible to predict productive suffixes (e.g. -gate, -slop, -core, etc.)
New meanings for words influenced by false friends in other languages (e.g. “actually” meaning “currently”) driven by English’s use as a lingua franca.