Each year, due to the widespread of the internet, the culture surrounding it keeps constantly changing. Trends spread ever so rapidly across the world than they ever have before. These include trends in clothing, music, movies, etc. The language cultivated on these platforms has also become an integrated part of everyone’s vocabulary. Let us know more about that the Keep’em Coming Meaning & Usage-Know More.
Keep ‘em coming is a more casual way of saying the phrase ‘Keep Them Coming’. This is used to say to continue a flow of, mostly positive things to happen. For example, “Those magic tricks are so cool, keep ‘em coming!”
Meaning and Contexts
Keep ‘em coming is a phrase or an idiom, which means it is a collection of words that are often used together to form a part of a sentence. This collection of words can mean something literal or something metaphorical as well.
If used literally, it could mean to let a supply of something keep going on. Like if a child is collecting candies in a basket for Halloween and someone has one of his favorite kinds of candies, he could refer to the candies as “‘em” and ask the person to continue giving the candies in large amounts.
Another example could be if an employee at a supermarket is checking out and billing a customer, they might use the words ‘keep ‘em coming’ while referring to the groceries purchased by the customer so they could prepare the bill. It can also be used as a hint on doing things faster, that is, in this case, passing on the groceries faster.
It can also be used to refer to people as well. If in a movie theatre, the employee is checking the tickets for everyone at the movie theatre and the security is checking them before letting them in, the ticket checker could ask the security guard to ‘keep ‘em coming’ to ask them to let the people in quicker.
For a more non-literal or metaphorical sense, the idiom can be used to describe a flow of ideas or thoughts. For example, if a teacher is asking for ideas from the students as to what can be done to prevent global warming, they can use the idiom as a mode of encouragement to the students so that they send out positive ideas in the class.
Since the phrase is not very formal, it makes it very likable among the younger age group and can be used to encourage any positive behavior or attitude.
It can be used with a sarcastic connotation as well, like a teenager telling their mother sarcastically ‘keep ‘em coming’ while their mother is giving them a list of chores to complete.
These words can also be used in their other forms, such as different tenses, or formats, for example, saying that “The only thing that keeps ‘em going in life is their children”, which uses the opposite of ‘coming’ in the sentence.
Difference Between Them and ‘em
‘Em is just a shorter way of saying the word ‘them’. It is mainly used in speech to make a sentence sound good or in a sing-song manner. It is also used in poems and songs to maintain a certain rhyme scheme.
While many might assume the shorter form of them is created due to the internet language, that may not be true. It has been used for centuries in plays, dramas, lyrics, folklores, poems, etc. as a way to make the sentence sound more appealing while saying. Although it is gaining more popularity these days, people prefer using a shorter form of words as means of communication.
Them is not the only word that has a shortened version of it so it sounds better. There are words like around, used and pronounced as ‘round, or playing used as playin’, or anything ending with ‘ing’ being used as in’. This stops the words from having the phonetic sound of the letter ‘g’, making it easier to rhyme with other words.
While these were mainly used in speech and not writing, nowadays writing these words in such a way has also gained popularity. Many places still consider it to be informal to use such shortened words in writing, it is used as a popular way to communicate via text messages, similar to other slang.
This could be a result of the assumption that it is something that is developed by the current generation.
Conclusion
While the English language keeps evolving, some various words and phrases are added to it to keep it up to date with the current times. And while most of the time, these words and phrases are just alternatives to or different forms of an existing word or phrase, it is easier to adapt them into our day-to-day lives.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the phrase “keep ‘em coming’” AAVE?
No, the phrase is not necessarily used in African American Vernacular English exclusively.
What does the inverted comma in ‘em stand for?
A single inverted comma is used as a way to denote missing alphabet(s) in a word for example, in the word don’t, the inverted comma stands for the letters ‘no’ from the words do not. Hence, in ‘em, it stands for ‘th’ of them.
