Overheard: "Legitly"

Hey, guys! Since I know we're all abbreviation-happy, I thought I might report that I have heard the word "legitly" spoken on the Yale campus twice this week. It's a combination of the word "legit" (as in the abbreviation of the word "legitimate") with an "-ly" tacked on to make it an adverb. My suitemate from North Carolina used the word once at dinner, and then a couple of days later I heard it used again, interestingly enough, by a middle-aged male construction worker (a vastly different kind of speaker than a college-age female from the South).

It really piqued my interest, since it's clear neither the construction worker nor my suitemate was using "legit" consciously--as a curiosity or a novel slang word. Rather, the word had sunk at some point into their mental word banks, and when it was uttered, was treated by the brain as any other common morpheme, following the same English morphological rules (take an adjective and tack on "-ly" to make an adverb).  Now that's legitly interesting!

--Amy