Naturally the young are more inclined to novelty than their elders and it is in their speech, as it always was, that most of the vocabulary changes originate. But listening critically to their talk I hear hardly my new words. It is all a matter of using old words in a new way and then copying each other as they wish to speak differently from their parents. They want even more to speak like people of their own age. A new usage once took time to spread, but now a pop star can flash it across the world in hours.
Of course, it is not only the young who like to use the latest in-word. While they are describing their idols as smashing, great, or cosmic (宇宙的), their parents and the more discriminating of the younger set are also groping for words of praise that are at once apt and fashionable. However, their choice of splendid, brilliant, fantastic and so on will in turn be slightly dimmed by over-use and need replacement.
Magic is a theme that has regularly supplied words of praise (and the choice must betray something in our nature). Charming, entrancing and enchanting are all based on it. So also is marvelous, which has been used so much that some of its magic has faded while among agers wizard has a great run. Another of this group, though you might not think it, is glamorous (迷人的), which was all the fashion in the great days of Hollywood. Glamour was a Scottish dialect form of "grammar", which itself was an old word for enchantment (Grammar means the study of words, and words have always been at the heart of magic). The change from "r" to "l" may have come about through the association with words like gleaning and glittering.
On the whole, when a new word takes over the old ones remain, weakened but still in use, so that the total stock increases all the time. But some that start only as slang and never rise above that class can disappear completely. "Did you really say ripping when you were young" my granddaughter asked me, rather than asking if I ever wore a suit of amour. Of course I did and it was no sillier than smashing, which some of her contemporaries are still saying.
The fact that magic is a frequent source of words of praise suggests that people ______.