It's funny how phrases are used as the seeds of new concepts. If someone says "The quarterback is toast" everyone knows he means toast as a metaphor for death, which is in turn a metaphor for done or defeated.

This metaphor chain goes so far that if someone says "that bread is toast" most people get the implication that the bread has somhow become unfit, not that it, surprisingly, is actually toasted bread.

Okay, interesting, but a couple days ago a friend of mine used "big brother" as an adjective, as in "the whole sitch is so Big Brother, only I was the red room!"

A month ago, to call something 'Big Brother' would have referenced the invisible, omnicient hand of society's leaders in Orwell's 1984. Before that was published, it just meant the benevolent, if heavy-handed and overprotective, actions of a metaphorical or literal older brother.

Everything's gone meta. My friend's English teacher used to say, "The greatness of the English language is thatany noun can be verbed." Nowadays it seems that any metaphor can be coined anew, and served as the basis for a new one. Talk about language recycling.

Another quick example: Did you realize that the word 'realize' didn't mean to notice or comprehend, but more to literally picture something? Language moved on, and 'actualize' was brought in to fill the gap left by the migration of 'realize.'

Random note: I hate it when people say "I literally blah-blah-blah" like "I literally died right there." or "I literally blew my top." don't people know what the word means? It's almost as bad as "Ironic". but that's a whole other story I might do a project on next semester. That would be ironic.

Or would it?