Words, like biological species, are engaged in what Charles Darwin called a “struggle for existence.” Some have what it takes, earning the right to roll off the next generation of tongues, while others get consigned to the pages of Merriam-Webster — or become forgotten entirely.
What sets the survivors apart? A recent study in the journal PNAS, by a team of international researchers, found that many successful English words have three crucial traits: they’re acquired early in life, they refer to something concrete, and they’re emotionally arousing. (They offer “sex” and “fight” as two notable examples.)
Playing the “Telephone” Game
To figure that out, they asked some 12,000 people to retell short stories. That is, they essentially ran a giant game of “telephone,” where one person whispers something to the person beside them, they repeat it to the next, and so on. As every 8-year-old knows, it’s an object lesson in the challenge of preserving a message across multiple retellings. With enough intervening speakers, “The dog chews shoes” easily transforms into “Which blog do you use?”
