You’ve got some new “official” tools in your proverbial tool shed for that blog post, press release, etc. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary just added roughly 100 new entries and most of them resemble something that you’d find in an Urban Dictionary rather than one that has its roots dating back to 1806.
Let’s cut to the chase. Here are some of them (verbiage taken directly from Merriam-Webster):
— Americana: genre of American music with roots in early folk and country music.
— boomerang child: young adult who returns to live at her or her family home, especially for financial reasons.
— bromance: a close nonsexual friendship between men. ***NOTE, MY PERSONAL FAVORITE***
— cougar: slang term for a middle-aged woman seeking a romantic relationship with a younger man.
— crowdsourcing: the practice of obtaining needed services, ideas or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people, especially from the online community, rather than from traditional employees or suppliers.
— duathlon: a three-part long-distance race typically having a running phase, a bicycling phase and a final running phase.
— fist bump: a gesture in which two people bump their fists together, as in greeting or celebration.
— helicopter parent: a parent who is overly involved in the life of his or her child.
— m-commerce: business transactions conducted by using a mobile electronic device, such as a cellphone.
— parkour: the sport of traversing environmental obstacles by running, climbing or leaping rapidly and efficiently.
— robocall: a telephone call from an automated source that delivers a pre-recorded message to a large number of people.
— social media: forms of electronic communication, such as websites for social networking and microblogging, through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal message and other content such as videos.
— tweet: a post made on the Twitter online message service.
— walk-off: ending a baseball game immediately by causing the winning run to score for the home team in the bottom of the last inning, i.e., a walk-off homer. Also, won by the home team in the bottom of the last inning, i.e., a walk-off win.
This was the first time Merriam-Webster added new terms since 2009 when it added “vlog,” “webisode,” “flash mob” and “pdf” to its dictionary.
How are new entries chosen you ask? Peter Sokolowski, editor-at-large for the dictionary, says it’s an informal process “It’s just a process of seeing a word used frequently and in many different sources,” he says.
What could be other possible new entries in the coming years? Sokolowski says there are a few words on his short list including “man cave,” “millennials” and “mashup.”
Man cave and bromance… the possibilities are endless.
