English is a weird language because it cribs shamelessly from every other language and constantly breaks its own rules, making it difficult to pick up for non-native speakers and, well, native speakers, too.
It is, like any living language, constantly evolving and adding new words, some of them kinda dumb (like finfluencer, which sounds like an Instagram for fish seeking to be more beautiful, but is actually just a portmanteau for “financial influencer” which is so boring that zzz….), some of them inevitable (metaverse), and some that feel like they’ve always been words (janky).
Repurposed words or catchy phrases rise up in popular usage much more rapidly now, with the internet all over the place messing things up. Where once it might have taken years for “give no fucks” to enter the popular lexicon (at least in impolite company), now it gets memed to death after a couple of weeks.
Which brings me to unpacking colourways.
What is a colourway? According to my browser’s dictionary pop-up tool: “Any of a range of combinations of colours in which a style or design is available.” That is 16 words to describe just one: colours. And yet people constantly use colourway now to sound hip and in the moment. “The new MacBook Air comes in four colourways.” No, it comes in four colours. There is no meaningful distinction between colourway and colour. Go ahead and find an instance of colourway and substitute colour. It will always work because colourway is used by dopes trying to sound cool. Or whatever word is being used for “cool” now.
Then we have unpacking, or to unpack. Once it meant “open and remove the contents of (a suitcase, bag, or package).” But now it also means to explain something. You can see how this evolved to get the new meaning. Having a lot of stuff to unpack requires time, patience and care (unless you hire a gorilla to unpack for you, in which case it is quick, chaotic and likely to involve a lot of shredding and damage). Unpacking something carefully and methodically can be used as a metaphor for doing the same with a non-tangible thing, like an ethical dilemma, or a big argument over colourways.
However logical this metaphorical extension of the word may seem, I’m still pretty sure you’ll still want to barf if you do a search to see how often the word is used everywhere and all the time. It went from zero to trite faster than you can say pumpkin spice latte.
So, final score:
- Colourway: Don’t use this word, it makes you look like a guy from the 1980s wearing suspenders to be edgy and “with it”
- Unpack: You can use this word if you want to fit in, since everyone else is using it. Or try to come up with the next “unpack” and make your own mark on the language!
