Which terms illustrate lexical innovation driven by 20th/21st-century technology?

• A. Email and spam
• B. Blog and selfie
• C. Tweet and meme
• D. App and internet

Answer: (B)

The idea being tested is how new technology creates fresh words to label new online practices and experiences. Blog and selfie fit this perfectly because they are distinctly tied to the internet and smartphones, and they were coined to name new behaviors that emerged with those technologies.

Blog comes from a shortened form of “weblog,” a concept of online personal journals that grew with the web. It’s a clear example of a new lexical item created to describe a new online practice. Selfie is a more recent coinage that describes self-portrait photos taken with a phone camera and shared on social media—another direct result of technological change prompting new vocabulary.

Other options mix in terms that either predate these internet-era innovations or describe broader tech concepts not uniquely tied to late-20th/early-21st-century online culture (for example, email and spam, app and internet, or tweet and meme). While some of these relate to technology, they don’t illustrate the same clear pattern of language being invented specifically to name new tech-driven behaviors in the same way.