semantic_broadening epitome of incomprehensibility A couple of curiosities in this area: "Paranoid" to mean "unreasonably worried" in general, not just "unreasonably worried that people are out to harm you." I thought this was a peculiarity of my speech (e.g., "I'm paranoid about this computer crashing") until I heard a co-worker a few years younger than me use it this way too. "Doomscrolling," itself pretty recent, seems to have broadened its meaning from "compulsively scrolling through bad news" to "compulsively scrolling (even though you know it's wasting time)" without the content having to be particularly doom-like. My fanciful side suggests that "doom" here has reclaimed its older meaning of fate; it's as if the person is fated to scroll. (I'm in the second boat: I don't necessarily seek out "doomer" posts, but I get easily distracted by scrollable things.) 260809 what's it to you? who go blather from