"What's a Shipper?"

“What’s a shipper?”

This was tonight’s question that I posed over dinner.

I continued eagerly, “Not like someone who ships things out of a warehouse, mind you. I mean, what is a ‘shipper’? I read it in the comments of a blog about ‘Once Upon a Time’.”

My husband, mid-chew, paused to muffle what sounded like a guffaw. I looked at him, rather pointedly, and asked, “Well? What is it?” He shook his head violently and stifled what sounded like choked laughter, followed by a mumbled, “I have no idea.”

My daughter was giggling now – apparently, I had asked a question that she knew the answer to. “A ‘shipper’, Mom? Do you mean you read that someone ‘shipped’ something? Like ‘I ship Rumbelle?’ It means that you support them, you stand by them, this couple. That’s what ‘ship’ means. It’s a Tumblr word.” She giggled again to herself, and I distinctly heard her say under her breath, “what’s a ‘shipper’?”

The changing of the English language has been around for generations, and will continue, long into the future. The younger generation has always wished to keep their business secret, hence the need to change up words to give them alternate meanings. “Hood”, “fat”, “sick”, “righteous” – these words, and a whole slew of others, have taken on new meaning in the urban dictionary. It must be an attempt to further confuse and irritate an already confused and irritated generation. It doesn’t take much to spin my head right round, like a record player, these days. However, in my youth, I can remember attempting to spin the heads around of some of the older generation, namely my parents, with words that were completely foreign to them. It was like a rite of passage, this new way of speaking, and it felt liberating and exciting and a little awkward. But it was fun.

After said conversation over dinner, I had the song, “You Spin Me Right Round” stuck on autoplay in my brain, so I began to sing it. You know how it goes – sometimes, if you sing the song, you forget it. Or, worse, it becomes permanently etched into your brain. Anyway, I began to sing softly, as it seemed appropriate for the current situation. My daughter, she of supersonic selective hearing, queried: “Mom, what’s a record player?”

Now it was my turn to giggle. I have to admit that I was making a bit of sport of it when I told her, “Something that plays records.” When she queried what a “record” was, I further added, “You know, like vinyl? A record player is something that vinyl is played on.” She nodded knowingly, and the conversation was over, for the time being.

Score one for the "older generation".

There have been so many changes in our lifetime, between wordage and technology, that the old things that we sought for comfort, such as record players, transistor radios, and cassette tapes, have quickly become a thing of the past. Language changes have also been quite rapid. Apparently, nobody says, “Wow, that’s so cool” anymore. The word of the moment is now “sick”, as in, “That movie was totally sick!” Same meaning, different word.

Yet another circumstance where I asked whether or not the movie was actually twisted, regarding the critique of the film that my daughter had offered. This heralded more gales of laughter from the peanut gallery, and I left the room sheepishly, vowing never to ask again for the explanation of a phrase that was foreign to my ears.

Until the “ship” incident.

Apparently, “ship” is also a shortening of the word “relationship”. It is a term used to describe fan fictions that take previously created characters and put them as a pair. It usually involves combining the two names to make a “ship” name. For example, in the TV show, “Once Upon a Time”, Rumpelstiltskin and Belle are in a relationship. The name of their relationship, to follow the “ship” definition, is Rumbelle.

Not too long ago, Malcolm McDowell and James Earl Jones were seen in commercials for a telephone company, whereby they were speaking out a texted conversation. I had to laugh – hearing James Earl Jones speak the phrase, “Totes McGoates” was hilarious. The phrase, for anyone who does not already know, means “totally”, as in “I am in total agreement with you.” And whenever the phrase “totally” comes into play in our home, my husband is at the ready with a quick comeback: “that’s totally tubular.” I make it a point to question whether or not he fancies a trip to the Valley for some acid washed jeans, oh my God! How quickly doth the language change…

And speaking of “fancy”, let’s discuss another perfect example of misunderstanding today’s new meanings of old words. I began singing the song, “Fancy” by Iggy Azalea last week, while cooking dinner. I actually like the beat of the song, so I began to sing it in the house one day. Not the entire song, mind you – just the chorus. I thought it was actually kind of fun, and I was having a great old time of it, until my daughter popped her head into the kitchen and groaned, “No, Mom, eww.” I hadn’t the faintest idea why she was so disgusted, until I checked Urban Dictionary myself.

There were several meanings, but the one that stood out in my mind was #7: “A top hat wearing elephant with shiny shoes who drinks $200 VIP champagne with his or her superior trunk.” Uh, no.

For obvious reasons, I no longer sing the song in public. Or out loud, for that matter. Believe me when I tell you that I am doing a service to all of you, including myself, by preventing further humiliation to all.

I’ve decided that, for now, I’m going to use Urban Dictionary as my guide in the future, when I am presented with a word that seems out of context in a sentence. Hopefully, I won’t make the fatal error of using any new words while singing any of the new music out there.

Just to be on the safe side, perhaps I’ll refrain from singing any of the new music, until I know what I’m singing. I don’t want anyone thinking I’m wearing a top hat and drinking expensive champagne out of my superior trunk.