[Ads-l] "low-key" = "kind of" cit from Boston Globe

[Mark Mandel]

Almost totally off topic, there's a character in Neil Gaiman's novel *American
Gods* called "Low-Key Lyesmith", an alias of the Norse god Loki: "Low-Key"
because in this persona he's always unemotional and quiet, and "Lyesmith" a
disguised version of "liesmith", an accurate description of one whose words
can never be trusted.

Mark Mandel

On Mon, Sep 26, 2022, 2:31 PM Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at gmail.com> wrote:

> Adverbial "low(-)key" has become pretty common since it was in the running
> for 2015 ADS Word of the Year (along with its more unusual antonym
> "highkey"). Gretchen McCulloch wrote about it for Mental Floss that year:
>
>
> https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/71558/lowkey-word-thats-lowkey-snuck-our-vocabulary
>
> See the Feb. 2016 edition of "Among the New Words" (AmSp 91.1) with cites
> for "lowkey"/"highkey" back to 2008:
>
> https://bit.ly/ATNW91-1
>
> Merriam-Webster noted the adverbial sense in its "Words We're Watching"
> series in 2018 and revised the "low-key" entry to include it last year.
>
> https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/words-were-watching-low-key
> https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/low-key
>
> Dictionary.com and Oxford Dictionaries have also added the sense.
>
> https://www.dictionary.com/browse/low-key
> https://premium.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/low-key
>
> (Oxford entries require a premium link now that Lexico has gone away.)
>
> --bgz
>
> On Mon, Sep 26, 2022 at 2:02 PM Amy West <medievalist at w-sts.com> wrote:
>
> > "low-key" = "kind of" usage/sense:
> >
> > Published in Sept. 25, 2022 Boston Globe Magazine, p. 15, in the Love
> > Letters column:
> >
> > "I’m 23 and have never had a serious relationship. . . . And lastly 3.
> > How do I stop getting low-key bummed out from seeing happy couples (and
> > secretly wishing I had what they have)?"
> >
> >
> >
> >
> https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/09/21/magazine/i-have-crush-fictional-character-im-not-sure-how-find-real-love/
> >
> >
> >
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org