‘Cult’ Used to Mean Something. Now It Applies to Taylor Swift and Trader Joe’s.

nytimes.com published a piece framed around the word “cult” and how it has expanded in usage to apply to both Taylor Swift and Trader Joe’s. The provided excerpt states the theme at a high level but does not include examples or definitions.

Because the evidence includes only the headline-level framing, it remains uncertain what specific linguistic argument the article makes, how it treats “cult” historically, or what criteria are used to link Taylor Swift and Trader Joe’s to the term. The claim that the word now applies to those two subjects is supported by the source framing, but the article’s reasoning is not shown in the excerpt here.