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If the English language is like a great and churning word stew, then dictionaries must sometimes play the spoons, scooping up fresh phrases as they surface: useful neologisms, well-baked slang and the best bits spilled over from foreign and academic tongues.
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary recently announced the results of its most recent haul — more than a thousand new words filed into its pages and online repertoire.
“This is a significant addition of words to our dictionary, and it reflects both the breadth of English vocabulary and the speed with which that vocabulary changes,” said Lisa Schneider, the chief digital officer and publisher at Merriam-Webster, in a news release.
It was a bumper year for the hyphenated or two-part phrases. Welcome the face-palm, along with binge-watch, side-eye, weak sauce, wayback machine, chef's knife, town hall, throw shade, ride shotgun and safe space.
There was no single hard-and-fast rule for the words that made the cut. Rather, dictionary curation was a series of judgments based upon the frequency, meaningfulness and spread of a word. Useful terms, widely spread, are “therefore likely to be encountered by a reader,” the dictionary wrote in a statement. “In some cases, terms have been observed for years and are finally being added; in others, the fast rise and broad acceptance of a term has made for a quicker journey.”
A few new words were acronyms: SCOTUS (Supreme Court of the United States), FLOTUS (first lady of the United States), EVOO (extra-virgin olive oil) and NSFW (Not Safe For Work).
Several terms were already in the dictionary, but had to be updated to reflect a new permutation. One sense of the word “ghost” has departed from a supernatural being or spirit into a verb performed after a bad date — a swift and complete termination of all contact with a romantic partner.
From science, Merriam-Webster took microbiome, the collection of microorganisms living in a specific habitat, particularly within the human body; prosopagnosia, an inability to recognize faces, or face-blindness, which neurologist Oliver Sacks — who had it himself — described for the New Yorker (Sacks once exited his psychiatrist's office and then met a strange and “soberly dressed man who greeted me in the lobby of the building” — this was, in fact, his analyst); and the revolutionary gene-editing technique CRISPR.
A few other new inductees included microaggression, that subtle or unconscious slight against a marginalized group; Seussian, meaning to evoke Dr. Seuss; ginger, red-colored hair or a person with red hair; and photobomb, photographs humorously ruined by the unexpected placement of a face, animal or other object.
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