This is the download from the BBC.

For more information and our terms of use,

go to BBCworldservice.com

slash podcasts.

This is the Keep Your English Up-To-date Podcast from BBC Learning English.com.

In this week's program, John Aetto explains the origin, meaning and use of the word edgy. Edgy. Edgy.

Edgy. If there's any word that needs to be up-to-date, fashionable and cool,

it's a word that means up-to-date fashionable cool. What could be more

pase, more naf than an old word for new? Well actually what goes around can sometimes come around.

Cool itself is a good example.

In the 1940s and 50s it was the height of verbal fashion. It then went through a long period out of favour

when it seemed so last generation. And now of course it's right back in fashion.

But many of its synonyms are irrevocably on the scrap heap. Trendy, with it, happening. Where it's at, where are they now.

So what is the latest fashionable word?

It's edgy.

Now, the idea behind edgy is that the edge is the most forward part of something, the place

where new things are happening, where the future is becoming the present. We talk to of innovation taking place at the leading

edge or at the cutting edge. So the imager is quite familiar. One slight problem is that historically edgy has long meant

something completely different, anxious, nervous, on edge. But we can cope with words that have multiple meanings. When someone

recommends the edgiest new restaurant in town, we realize there's no cause for

anxiety. That was the Keep Your English

up-to-date podcast. For more learning English downloads and quizzes go to our

...