A punctuation mark slash word

Love this piece on new uses of the word slash.

Finally, a student asked, “Why are you so interested in this?” I answered, “Slang creates a lot of new nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. It isn’t that often that slang creates a new conjunction.”

[...]

The emergence of a new conjunction/conjunctive adverb (let alone one stemming from a punctuation mark) is like a rare-bird sighting in the world of linguistics: an innovation in the slang of young people embedding itself as a function word in the language.

The interesting thing is that the word isn't just used to offer up alternatives -- i.e. serving a similar function to its namesake punctuation -- but also to connote ​'following up', e.g.

Really love that hot dog place on Liberty Street. Slash can we go there tomorrow?

The whole thing is well worth a read if any of this seems interesting...

Slash: Not Just a Punctuation Mark Anymore