Hangry. Binge-watch. Upvote. Manspreading.
As college students, I'm sure we can all think of the appropriate contexts for these words: how you feel when you get out of a three-hour lecture that spans over lunch; what you do with "Parks and Recreation" on a Thursday night; an action saved for the best of Yaks and Reddit posts; and what the guy next to you in your 200-person lecture does, much to your disdain. But did you know that these words are no longer just colloquialisms, but are actually accepted as proper English by the Oxford Dictionary?
As someone passionate about languages -- particularly their evolution -- I love seeing the chosen words that go from being slang to being real dictionary entries every year. Usually the words are humorous (take neckbeard, for example), but others (such as bae and YOLO) become hotly debated by self-declared grammarians and prescriptivists everywhere.
However, there's one new word introduced as of August 2015 that, in my opinion, hasn't gotten nearly enough attention: the gender-neutral title Mx (pronounced like the word "mix"). Mx, according to the Oxford dictionary, is "a title used before a person’s surname or full name by those who wish to avoid specifying their gender or by those who prefer not to identify themselves as male or female."
But why is this so important?
Today, there is a growing number of people who identify as genderqueer, non-binary, or gender non-conforming. To them, filling out medical forms can be a source of anxiety; which box do you check when you're neither Mr. nor Ms.? For these people, the evolution of the somewhat commonly used title to acceptable everyday language represents a major shift in how the world perceives them. No longer will people who don't fit the dichotomy of the gender binary stare at official forms in a panic, unsure of what title to place in front of their names. They now have a solution that is not only validated by their peers and allies, but by the English language itself.
Language, to some traditionalists' despair, is an ever-changing, ever-evolving entity. It evolves with both time and necessity as new generations begin to express themselves and as politics change. We, as the millennial generation, need to embrace this change; not only does it allow people to use words like Mx to feel more comfortable in their daily lives, but it also allows the exclamation "It's beer o'clock!" to be grammatically correct and widely accepted. What more could we ask for?
