Drop It Like It's Hot

 

I've noticed something that may be of interest to linguists or pop culture geeks. You know how there are some words that mean both one thing and its opposite? Like the word "sanction"--it can mean both to officially endorse, encourage, sponsor, etc., and to prohibit, discourage, or penalize. It can mean either officially allowing or officially disallowing. I don't know what these words are called, but if I were naming them, I might call them "autoantonyms."

Anyway, I've discovered a new one that's the result of evolving slang. I don't mean like how "bad" still retains its original definition in formal speech but means "good" in AAVE. This one has crept into usage among journalists. My wife suggested that perhaps it was just lingo peculiar to that field, but I'm seeing more widespread usage of it than just that.

The word is "dropped." It still retains its original definition of allowing something to physically fall (or causing it to fall). That hasn't changed. But in addition to that, we used to use "dropped" in a figurative way meaning "to abandon or discontinue," as in "The deadline for dropping classes without penalty is next Tuesday," or, "My boyfriend hit me, so I dropped him like a bad habit." (...which is kind of a weird expression itself, given that bad habits are not usually dropped suddenly or permanently.)

But the new figurative use means nearly the opposite. It means "to introduce, to present." I've heard pundits say, "The New York Times just dropped a headline..." which to me, means they retracted it, deleted it, refused to print it, or otherwise decided not to use it. But that's not the meaning the speaker intended. They meant, "The New York Times just published a headline," the idea being that "dropped" conveys a suddenness and powerful impact. This leads me to believe it may have come from "mic drop" or from a common origin with that expression.

Another example is one I just encountered in a magazine article. The author was telling a story about an online interaction with her friend. The friend sent her a link to a Substack, but she related this as "She dropped a link..."

I suppose in that sense, it might also come from video games. In many multiplayer games, you can't actually hand an item from your character to another player's character. To make such a transfer, you have to "drop" the item from your inventory, letting it fall on the ground, where it can then be picked up by someone else. So perhaps the author meant "dropped" in the sense of "She had this thing, but intentionally let it fall to the ground for me to find, like Hansel and Gretel dropping bread crumbs."