The English language in America is always changing with new terms and phrases added to our vocabulary. With the advent of cellular phones and text messaging terms like, bff, lol, and ttly have meaning for millions of mostly younger citizens. So the other day a headline came across my desk from Kristina Knight that caught my eye but delivered little of what I expected.
The term, Off Grid, is generally clear with two major meanings.
- Off Grid, as in off the interconnected national electricity grid that supplies power to most homes.
- Off Grid, as in off the government and mainstream society and documentation grid. This is for the spies and others with legal challenges. (not the meaning used around here!)
However, if you read Kristina Knight’s article of this title, you see a new use of the term. This new use considers you to be “off grid” if you don’t watch ‘live’ television or cable TV. The article is simply about how many Americans are using the Internet to view some or all of their video content like news, entertainment clips, and full length movies. So now we have this list of meanings for the term ‘off grid’ :
- Off Grid, as in off the interconnected national electricity grid that supplies power to most homes.
- Off Grid, as in off the government and mainstream society and documentation grid. This is for the spies and others with legal challenges.
- NEW Off Grid, as in Not watching live broadcast or cable TV!
Kind of ironic when you think about it. Now you too can go ‘off grid’ fast, no planning, no expense, no alternate power, just a good Internet connection and YouTube! Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy and supply the Internet to customers where I work, I just worry about ‘off grid’ becoming the latest fad term that the media assigns many contradictory meanings to.
What are the latest slang terms that annoy you, or what changes do you see that confuse? No wonder English is so hard to learn! Tell us your thoughts in the comments below!
- Off Grid, as in off the interconnected national electricity grid that supplies power to most homes.
- Off Grid, as in off the government and mainstream society and documentation grid. This is for the spies and others with legal challenges. (not the meaning used around here!)
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I get annoyed at journalist who are lazy and distort the meaning of established words instead of devising new terms to define new situations. An example of good reporting is David Roberts who writes for GRIST magazine and introduced the term ‘climate hawks’ to define people who care about climate change and clean energy source.
I get annoyed when some people try to change the definition of grid to encompass all municipal services even when these services do not resemble a grid structure and can rarely be cross connected in a grid like manner. Sewers being one of them. A sewer system has to be designed in a radial pattern to work properly. It is not a grid.