From Washington, DC, this is Lexicon Valley, a podcast about language.
I'm Bob Garfield with Mike Volo.
In our last episode, we talked about the word great,
a once majestic part of the vocabulary that has been weakened and diluted over time.
And today, we consider a kind of opposite situation, a word that has accumulated power.
in recent years, especially within Gen Alpha and Zoomers.
Hey, Mikey.
Hey, Bob.
How you doing?
Splendid.
Thank you and your own self.
I'm great.
Great.
I like the way that you framed this episode.
You sound
like you're you're longing for those halcyon days of your when words like great really meant something and when kids weren't coming up with new ways to insult us boomers and Gen Xers.
When the air was clean and there were no cat backpacks.
I'm not sure I remember a time when the air was clean.
I don't think the air has been clean since the late Pleistocene era.
Well, that's when I was in high school.