As I was sitting at my dad's desk this weekend writing a paper, I stumbled upon a page he had torn out of his newest issue of AARP magazine. It was titled the Power of 50: New Words added to English dictionaries. It did not include all of the new words that the top English dictionaries added, but this was a fun selection of some of the words. As I read through it, I couldn't help but notice how many were based on new technologies and forms of media. You can check out all of the words here.
Here are a few that exemplify how our world is changing:
15. flash mob n. Brief gathering for a common purpose, announced by e-mail or text.
39. social media n. Websites and applications used for social networking.
This one seems obvious, but being in the dictionary is like something being set in stone; you know it is here to stay, at least for a while.
Another addition was "viral", a noun meaning circulating rapidly on the internet. I have heard this word many times, as, I am assuming, have you. But to be totally honest, I didn't know exactly what it meant until this AARP article. I feel pretty lame.
Out of all these words, the one I think best exemplifies our changing world and the media's stranglehold on it is this one:
43. truthiness n. Quality of seeming true.
Truthiness is a word invented by Stephen Colbert on his program, "The Colbert Report". One man, in fact a persona portrayed by an individual for a parody of a news program, invented a word, and now it is in the dictionary.
So what do these new additions say about our world? I think it says that we are growing into our own; owning our technology and making it more accessible to the computer illiterate. The proof is in the pudding; they were published in AARP's magazine.
I found this fascinating. I looked through the fifty new words. I'll be honest some of the words I'd never heard before. I have never seen or heard the words sheeple or automagically. I thought the words webisode, flash mob, paywall,and meme were interesting. I've never heard these before. Don't feel lame because I was completely out of the loop of even realizing these words existed. I think these definitions are helpful for explaining the internet and some of its capabilities. However,I did find it funny that AARP thought it would be useful for adults over fifty to know what pimp, heart, hater, and frenemy mean. Also, as I'm typing this six of the words are marked as being misspelled because they are not recognized as correct by the computer. Frenemy might be in the dictionary, but the computer still says it is spelled incorrectly.
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