From Fast Company:
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary has just added 840 new entriesto our ever-expanding language, including adorbs, Instagramming, rando, TL;DR, GOAT, Latinx, avo, bingeable, time suck, hangry, salty (as in, salty), bougie, and CBD. Basically, every word that you need to keep up a convo with the gen Z kiddos in your life—and generation Z was added to the dictionary, too.
There are also a bunch of new foodie terms to play in Scrabble, including guac, mocktails, zoodles, gochujang (that’s the Korean chili paste that accompanies bibimbap), mise en place, the French term familiar to anyone who watches Hell’s Kitchen, and flight, as in the craft beer tasting menu that your favorite hophead downs at the brewery.
The dictionary isn’t just an internet translation guide for the Olds, though. It has also added an important batch of science terms like acephalgic migraine, bashful bladder and shy bladder, biohacking, fintech, nanobot, and parusis, and haptics, which is the science of touch, which is behind the good vibration of a smartphone responding to your finger touch.
Link to the rest at Fast Company
“Youth is wasted on the young” – Shaw
Here I thought it was the old man in “It’s A Wonderful Life” when referring to George Bailey.
My daughter was just updating me on the slang in current use in her high school, and boy! there’s a whole new crop of words I’d either never heard of or else never heard used in that way: thot, worm, dishing tea, and “stanlist! Queen!”
::parent with head spinning::
Tease.
I can’t seem to get a sensible Google search for “stanlist! Queen!”
What do these new words mean?
‘Worm’ seems to be an ultimately flexible term used in almost any context to mean ‘thing,’ ‘meme,’ ‘this,’ or whenever the speaker needs a vague, stand-in word.
“Stanlist! Queen!” is used to express extreme approval for what someone has said or done, or extreme approval for them generally because they are always doing awesome things. It embodies the concept of a stalker-fan, but without the creepy aspect. The person speaking their admiration feels like a fan standing in line to get an autograph from the celebrity (their friend, the ‘Queen’).
‘Dishing tea’ is the activity of gossiping, sometimes over a cup of tea, often completely without any teacup in sight. (Yes, my daughter was ‘dishing tea’ during this conversation, as well as enjoying bewildering her parents with the new lingo.)
I think it’s worth noting that slang–especially new slang that most people have never heard of–can be extremely localized to a specific region, city, or even school. And it can go in and out of fashion as quickly as anything else. I’d certainly wait until words reached a certain level of wide-spread and had been around for a fair length of time before adding them to the dictionary.
(Makes me think of Never Been Kissed, where one of the cool high schoolers arbitrarily decides “Rufus” shall be the new word for “cool” and everyone goes along with it because he’s popular.)
Agreed. I have no idea if my daughter’s quick ‘lesson’ is applicable to anywhere other than her own high school. But it was a fun conversation. And I must admit a strong liking for “stanlist! Queen!” 😉
(I burst out with the expression spontaneously after hearing my daughter’s account of how she handled a challenging situation with one of her friends. I was so proud of her! Stanlist! Queen!)
My eyes keep reading it “Stalinist! Queen!” Not sure what that would be slang for.
LOL! I suspect that would be “a horse of a different color”!
THOT: That Ho Over There. Another way of calling someone a slut/skank.
While it is true that “thot” means slut in the literal sense, my daughter informs me that the term is used affectionately between friends (in her circle)—as I might say, “Dude!” (with an upbeat, admiring tone).
In the circles I’m in—where the word is used in the wild—it’s more associated with women who tease men. Whether they actually put out is another matter.
That said, “if she breathe, she a thot.”
Wait a minute. Nanobot? Why did it take them this long to add nanobot?
They don’t read SF or tech journals.
Or Michael Crighton, apparently.
What? Crichton isn’t SF?
Pretty much all his stories fall apart without the scientific concept…
You don’t just play Scrabble with any old dictionary. The game has it’s own official dictionary.
Waste of time because as soon as the ‘hip’ kids discover the ‘old folks’ have cracked the code they’ll start working on a new one … 😛