Vinyls Vinyls Vinyls: flicking the Vs at the language police

Has anyone written the definitive article on the linguistic switch from records (or vinyl records, or vinyl) to vinyls. Yeah man, these:

So good they named them thrice

Obviously vinyls are everywhere these days, but there doesn't seem to be much around on how they came into existence (the word, not the things). Time-wise, it presumably happened sometime in the early-2010s (or was it before this?). In March 2016, there was a - not-entirely-serious? - Change.org petition calling for vinyls to be "enshrined as the official plural term for vinyl recorded media". Er, I'm not sure that's how language works - is there an enshrining ceremony in a palace or something? In any case, the petition was closed with a whopping ... 60 signatures. The petition's rationale was supposedly to stop hardcore record collectors from "ridiculing" new vinyl enthusiasts, these new enthusiasts presumably being mostly young people coming to vinyl as part of a new wave of interest, spurred on - of course - by an unhealthy dollop of record company/record shop marketing. While I imagine the petition was largely tongue in cheek, the idea of preventing the old closing ranks against the young seems OK to me. I think it's true that quite a few people who grew up with records in the 1960s, '70s or '80s tend to be sniffy about post-vinyl technology (CDs, downloads, streaming), and they'll extend their sense of superiority toward perfectly harmless 24-year-olds buying (overpriced) reissued records on Record Store Day. Huh, they're idiots. Paying that much. And they even call them 'vinyls'. As it goes I've always hated Record Store Day (I was moaning about it on here years ago) and I also wouldn't shell out £24.99 for a Gang Of Four album in the accursed Rough Trade "Black Friday" sale (god forbid). But if others are OK with this, that's their business. Meanwhile, back in the tatty racks of the charity shops (see photo), the place where "Vinyls Vinyls Vinyls" have returned with a vengeance, it's now customary to see all sorts of secondhand records/vinyl/vinyls at pretty steep prices - Level 42 12"s at £4.99, a Gary Moore album at £15, you name it. For the hardened middle-aged charity shop bloodhound (that would be me, I guess) this turn of events is sometimes bemoaned as one where "the game has gone". Meaning: there are no bargains left and everything's now expensive. Maybe, and it's true that in recent times I've seen staff in London charity shops scrolling through Discogs on their phones before putting price stickers on their little stash of (not very good) records. This can even get a little surreal. Yesterday, a woman working in a charity shop in east London went out of her way to tell me, "You can go on Discogs to see how much they're worth. They can be worth a lot". Er, yes, thanks for that. Anyway, I paid for the copy of Les Maitres-Tambours Du Burundi I'd found in the shop's dusty racks (99p), thanked her and left. Hurrah for the Burundi drummers (Ant music!) and hurrah for vinyls, vinyls, vinyls ...

User advice: always check Discogs before playing your records