455!
Can you believe that??!!??!!
Merriam-Webster has added 455 new words to its collection in October 2021.
Just as the language never stops evolving, the dictionary never stops expanding. New terms and new uses for existing terms are the constant in a living language, and our latest list brings together both new and likely familiar words that have shown extensive and established use.
What are the new words? Here are some:
For new food words, Merriam-Webster has added the likes of 'horchata,' which is a cold sweetened beverage, 'chincharron,' which is a small piece of pork belly eaten as a snack, 'goetta,' which is a kind of meat patty, 'fluffernutter,' a sandwich made with peanut butter and marshmallow crème, and 'air fryer.'
In the world of medicine, new words added to the dictionary include 'fourth trimester,' which is generally described as the first three-months of a newborn's life, 'halotherapy,' a treatment for asthma, bronchitis, and allergies, and 'titer,' a kind of blood sample measurement.
For pop culture, Merriam-Webster is introducing the words 'otaku,' which is a person having an intense or obsessive interest in the fields of anime and manga, 'faux-hawk,' a hairstyle resembling a Mohawk, and 'dad bod,' which is a physique regarded as typical of an average father, especially one that is slightly overweight and not extremely muscular.
The language of politics has expended in this year's dictionary as well, with new words being added including 'vote-a-rama,' an unusually large number of debates and votes that happen in one day on a single piece of legislation.
Then there is 'whataboutism,' the act or practice of responding to an accusation of wrongdoing by claiming that an offense committed by another is similar or worse, and 'astroturf,' or something falsely made to appear grassroots.
This year's new additions unsurprisingly include a number of tech and science words, such as the likes of 'bit rot,' which is the tendency for digital information to degrade or become unusable over time, 'teraflop,' a unit of measure for the calculating speed of a computer equal to one trillion, and 'copypasta,' which is data that has been copied and spread widely online.
Some of those are just plain crazy! Especially "fluffernutter"!! Seriously??
Grace & Peace & Love to you all -
Matt
p.s. Here is the list of words that Merriam-Webster added in January 2021: