Language is a living thing. And just as living things shift and evolve, language transforms over time. We may resist the changes that just sound “wrong” (I cringe when I hear someone say, “I was laying in the sun.”), but some of those alterations become so commonplace they’re adopted officially into our speech and into our dictionaries.

My prediction is that they/their is on its way to becoming the official third person singular pronoun (“Every person has their preference.”) It may even show up in the dictionary as such during our lifetimes.

We could choose the tack of the Académie française and set rigid rules for what can and cannot be uttered on our turf (or at least within our earshot) . . . or we can relax and enjoy the ride as English careens into the future.

English certainly is not the same animal it was a hundred years ago, or a hundred years before that. It is a living, breathing, changing entity. And it will continue to expand and migrate for as long as there are people to speak it.

Check out the evolution of the words in the following link, and then come back and share your favorite new words or word usages (e.g., “the bomb”; “friend” used as a verb; twerk; and so on).

Some Everyday Words That Meant Really Different Things