TikTok is literally rewriting the dictionary | Etymology Nerd

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]Is TikTok becoming the most powerful linguistic engine on earth at the moment? Is that what's shaping language more than anything else?

[00:00:07]>> Absolutely. There was a study by Know Your Meme in 2022 that found where words come from over time by percentage of platforms. And it started out mostly on 4chan and Reddit and Twitter. And now it's mostly TikTok and Twitter. A lot of stuff is happening in TikTok. There's linguistic innovation. There's a kind of everything comes from the user interface. There's a feeling of a conversation happening there. Users come there for the conversation, to chip in, to be part of this effervescent thing that's going on. And in that language is created. Along with this we have all these echo chambers and algorithmic trends being perpetuated that push modern slang cycles faster than ever before.