The word, today, is fluidity

Is your latchkey kid going to boomerang on you? Are you squeezed into the sandwich generation, or jumpstarting your third age with a retirement job?

Language is a powerful reflection of our values and priorities, so the latest buzzwords can tell us a great deal about what's on the horizon in the rapidly shifting realms of work and life. Think of words as instant perspective-givers, as well as crystal balls.

"When terms like 'sandwich generation' or 'mommy track' arise and become established, that's not just a linguistic issue, but a real marker of what people have decided to identify as important in a culture," says Thomas Pitoniak, an associate editor at Merriam-Webster, the Springfield-based publisher of dictionaries and other reference material.

What can we conclude from the top crop of work-life terms? In a word, it's all about fluidity -- from redefined families and new ways to work to colossal shifts in the senior stage of life. Check out this sampling to see if you're speaking -- and living -- the latest lingo.

Sandwich generation broke into the dictionary just last year, although the notion has been around since the 1980s. My 11-year-old daughter thought the phrase refers to people so hurried that they live on sandwiches eaten on the run, which is an apt guess. But really, the "sandwiched" are parents caring for an elderly relative and a child or children. Between 18 percent and 25 percent of working adults who are married or have partners belong to this group, estimates Leslie Hammer, a Portland State University professor who studies the trend. As we live longer, sandwiching will be a staple of American lives for a long time to come.

Latchkey children, believe it or not, are nothing new. This slang for a child left home alone in the afternoon dates to World War II, when mothers stepped up to the war effort and dads left for the front. New to the lexicon, however, is the boomerang kid, the grown child who never leaves home or returns to the nest. It's tough to afford lodging right out of college these days, and yet the boomerang'er is also a poster child for extended adolescence. Given that marriage and parenthood and now independent living come later in life, is age 25 the new 15? That might make sandwiching go on and on.

In the work world, our inability to disconnect is inspiring new expressions. There have always been forms of overwork, but now the word carries connotations of chronic accessibility, says Families and Work Institute president Ellen Galinsky. "In the past, you could work very hard but the boundaries were clearer," says Galinsky . A main culprit is the electronic tether, i.e. the cellphone or BlackBerry. "They don't call it the crackberry for nothing," Galinsky says.

Hand in hand with connectivity, however, comes new forms of flexibility. We don't just take time off or quit work, we on-ramp and off-ramp, pursuing flex careers that reflect the varied chapters in our longer lives.

"When I first got involved in work-life, a lot of the words were military: deployment, etc.," says Galinsky. "Then we used sports metaphors, like level playing field."

Now we use words that connote movement and fluidity and reflect an ever-shifting world. The good news: Such changes may help spell the end of rigid concepts like the mommy or daddy track, the often-dreaded slower career path for parents.

Still, at times we don't have the right lingo, and that's a telling state of affairs, too. That once-innocent word, "retirement," is, like lifetime employment, fast becoming a linguistic dinosaur.

People complain about Merriam-Webster's main definition of retirement -- "withdrawal from one's position or occupation, or from active working life" -- because they say they are very active while retired, says Pitoniak. "That sticks in retired people's craw," he says.

Marcie Pitt-Catsouphes, co-director of the Boston College Center on Aging & Work/Workplace Flexibility, gets the same message from vibrant older people. "Don't use the r-word," they tell her. "It's a taboo," she says.

But we don't yet have the words to describe this new era . Some are talking about retirement jobs, but that oxymoron doesn't capture the spirit of the times. People in the third age -- a new stage of adulthood -- "have a vision, but they don't know what to call it," says Pitt-Catsouphes. "We don't have any new words for what people are trying to create."

Words, words, words. They mirror our society and yet also influence the direction of change. Appreciate their possibilities and choose them with care. That's just one more way that you can shape the course of your life.

Balancing Acts appears every other week. Maggie Jackson can be reached at maggie.jackson@att.net.