I’m no linguistic purist. My brother and I exclaim “YOLO!” (you only live once) to each other, as in, “I backed into our neighbour’s car, and we didn’t realise our insurance had expired, YOLO!” Or: “Modern life is exhausting. My brain feels like a lab rat owned by sadistic scientists with an unhealthy zeal for electricity. YOLO!”

Sometimes I’ll add “AF” to the end of a sentence in front of unsuspecting parents, such as, “I’m tired AF.” (The A stands for “as” and, yes, the F stands for what you think it does. Google it.)

Inventing words is old-school, but let’s do it with panache.Credit: Getty Images/iStock

So, no, I’m no purist. But I was feeling a little curmudgeonly upon hearing Macquarie Dictionary’s announcement that its word of the year is enshittification. This added to a list of viral internet-speak words that have topped its charts in recent years (cozzie livs, brat, menty b).

It’s either an attempt to appeal to a younger generation or a depressing reflection of our internet babel, whereby trending words are spat out haphazardly for their 15 minutes of fame, enshittifying the language, like Frankenstein........

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