In its usual effort to keep up with ever the changing wordscape and stay cool with the ‘kids’, once again, the dictionary has added some new words in a desperate bid to stay relevant.
Dictionary.com has put out a list of new additions, including, antifragile, liminal space, petfluencer and digital nomad. Plus, some of the old words have been updated. Hellscape, a noun that has been around since the 1890s has seen a boom in use recently, which is great for that word, but horrible news for all of us currently alive in this hellscape.
Woke has been updated from just ‘not being asleep’ to ‘of or relating to a liberal, progressive orthodoxy, especially promoting inclusive policies or ideologies that welcome or embrace ethnic, racial, or sexual minorities.’
Plus, we have some other fun new additions, such as Pinkwashing ‘acknowledging and promoting the civil liberties of the LGBTQ+ community, but superficially, as a ploy to divert attention from allegiances and activities that are in fact hostile to such liberties’. Cakeage, the fee restaurants charge for eating cake outside, similar to corkage. Nearlywed, people who live in a relationship, but have no plans of marrying. Plus Superdodger, those people who have somehow never got Covid despite being exposed to the virus multiple times.
It’s an exciting time for words, but I still hold hope that my word will someday be included. ‘Bregg’ is when you fry an egg in a piece of bread.
