Welcome, New Words!

A little while ago I wrote about some guy who was trying to get a bunch of rejected words into the Oxford English Dictionary. My main gripe about them was that they were a) ridiculous, and b) a little too cutesy. I was kind of proud of the OED for standing their ground. Oh, if only I could feel that same sense of pride for the Oxford Dictionary of English, as they have caved into the cutesy-ness of etymology and have just added several new words to their dictionary. And I'm sure you will be shocked, simply shocked to learn that many of them displease me for a variety of reasons. Let's delve, shall we?

It's over there on the NewsFeed section of Time where we get a partial list of the 2,000 words that were added. Granted, I was only partially annoyed at the whole thing, but that doesn't mean I wasn't mostly annoyed. I was. I'm just not into making up words for things that don't need a word.

For instance, freaking staycation made it in. That's where, instead of going somewhere on vacation, you stay home instead. That's not a thing. It's staying home. It's not doing much. See, one can go on vacation. One can't go on a staycation. Just because it rhymes, doesn't make it right.

Another one of those would be bromance. That's a close, but allegedly non-sexual relationship between two men. For example, some people might say that two guys who go to Hawaii together are having a bromance. I would call two guys who go to Hawaii together gay.

Then there's the highly annoying automagically. I have never heard that one used before, but now that it's on this list, I'm sure that I'm going to be hearing/reading it all over the place. It's defined as "automatically and in a way that seems ingenious, inexplicable, or magic." We can't just use suddenly or somehow for that? What's wrong with "as if my magic"? It's funnier that way.

Another one that I have never heard used before (and am really hoping that I don't) is chillax. It sounds like a Dr. Seuss character, but it's not. (You might be thinking of The Lorax. I know I was.) It's defined as "calm down and to relax". Aren't those kind of the same? Can you be calm and not relaxed? Can you be relaxed and not calm? I don't think that you can. Therefore, there is no reason to combine the two. They're the same! What is wrong with you people? I can't do either one when I'm reading this sort of nonsense!

Another addition was LBD. This allegedly stands for "little black dress". I have never heard, nor read, this term ever being used. Ever. You can't just go around monogramming something! Along the same genre (that of fashion), they also included matchy-matchy, defined as "excessively colour-coordinated". I hope they know that it's also used when two people are dressed in a similar fashion. They're usually a couple. When couples are coordinating their outfits to compliment one another in an extremely gag-ifying manner, it's matchy-matchy. It's also barfy-barfy.

Apparently, the Oxford Dictionary in English is not in it for the laughs. Or maybe they are. Maybe that's why they added the extremely laughable hikikomori. Never heard of it? Why would you have? It means "the abnormal avoidance of social contact, typically by adolescent males". In JAPANESE! Do they not read the title of their own book? It's the Oxford Dictionary in ENGLISH. It's right there in the name. ENGLISH. Why are they throwing Japanese words in there? Besides, there's already a word for that. It's called "a gamer".

They included a few words that I can't believe weren't already in there. Seriously, they just now got around to adding buzzkill? On Family Guy, they've had that Buzz Killington character on there for quite some time. Are you telling me that the Oxford Dictionary in English folks don't fancy themselves purveyors of The Family Guy?

They're also just now adding wardrobe malfunction. Are you kiding me? That term has been around since 2004 when one of Janet Jackson's hoots accidentally popped out of whatever skin tight outfit she had donned that evening. We have had to hear about that 9/64ths of a second that America was flashed for the past six years. Just NOW they add it? What are they doing over there, exactly, that keeps them so busy? Or, at the very least, so completely unaware of pop-culture and the emergence of a Jackson breast?

And they've finally put in overthink, social media, chill pill and turducken. If you're not familiar with the last one, it is a chicken that is stuffed into a duck that is then stuffed into a turkey. It's also known as yummy. The deliciousness factor should always be taken into consideration when adding words to the dictionary.

You can see a very small chunk of the 2,000 words at the News Feed link that I provided above. It doesn't seem as if they add words very often, so for now, we're spared any more of this nonsense. But somewhere out there, someone is already tweeting some made up crap that we'll have to deal with next time. I guarantee it.