Is Merriam-Webster its own worst frenemy?
60% of new words in 2009 Collegiate were born before today’s college students
‘New’ words average age — 29 years
Austin, TX July 16, 2009, (MetaNewswire) – Is Merriam-Webster its own worst frenemy? The answer to that question can perhaps be answered by the upcoming release of its Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition with the addition of almost 100 new words and word meanings (or senses).
The ‘new’ words (with their dates of first usage) include:
New Word or Term First Usage
Carbon footprint 1999
Flash mob 1977
Green-collar 1990
Locavore 2005
Memory foam 1987
Missalette 1977
Reggaeton 2002
Sock puppet 1959
Waterboarding 2004
Webisode 1997
These are ‘new’ words only insofar as they were never included in Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate, but on average, the words were coined more than 29 years ago (according to M-W’s own definitions). This compares with the average age of today’s college students in the mid-twenties (even with the recent shift to older students).
On the web, ‘waterboarding’ has some 2,000,000 references, ‘webisode’ about 5,000,000 and ‘sock puppet‘ some half million (according to Google). Last year ‘dark energy’ was added to the Collegiate Dictionary some ten years after it had become the subject of much scientific, philiosophical and popular debate. (It had about 10,000,000 references at the time.)
“This is perhaps why students are evermore turning to online resources to understand current affairs and class materials. The reality of today’s Internet-based communications means that new English-language words are appearing and being adopted at an ever-quickening pace,” said Paul JJ Payack, President and Chief Word Analyst of the Global Language Monitor. “It is entirely possible some of these students heard or even used some of these words while they were still in grammar school”.
To celebrate the coming of age of English as the first, true, global language, The Global Language Monitor announced the 1,000,000th word to enter the English language on June 10, 2009. GLM estimates that a new word appears every 98 minutes, generated by the 1.5 billion people who now use English as a first, second or business language.
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Why Webster’s inclusion of the phrase ‘dark energy’
demonstrates the obsolescence of old-style dictionaries
Austin, TX July 8, 2008 -Recently, Merriam-Webster announced the new words it was including in its latest edition of its Collegiate Dictionary. These announcements are often viewed as a subject of amusement, with such additions as “air quotes,” “mental health day,” and “malware” to name but three of the hundred or so words added this year.
What did not amuse us, however, was the addition of the phrase “dark energy”. You see dark energy is the hypothetical entity that makes up nearly three-quarters of the energy-mass of the Universe. Moreover, it is the suspected culprit in the speeding up of the expansion of the Universe, which for reasons unknown, began to radically accelerate some five billion years ago. It is key to the current understanding (and investigation) of the theoretical construct of the Universe, how it began - and how it will end.
Students of physics, philosophy, and cosmography at fine institutions such as Bucknell, the University of Texas, CalTech, and Foothills Community College, among all the others worldwide, have been pondering the phenomenon of dark energy for nearly a dozen years now. However, they couldn’t look it up in their Funk & Wagnalls (nor their Webster’s) until now - because it was not recognized as a bona fide word.
Clearly, the methodologies of old-style dictionaries, first formulated by Dr. Johnson in the 18th century and Noah Webster at the dawn of the nineteenth, and carried on to this day by their immediate and legitimate successors, have run their course.
Students on wired campuses can google dark energy and see it come up in nearly 10,000,000 results. It is clearly a recognized phrase, clearly used by millions across the planet, embedded in learned papers, scientific studies, and contemporary letters. And yet it was still not considered a legitimate word or phrase of the English Language, until the honor was bestowed upon it by the esteemed editors of Merriam-Webster.
Perhaps, it is time to realize that not only the game but he playing field, itself, has been drastically altered. The center no longer holds. This is undoubtedly spured on by the interconnectedness and immediacy of the Internet, and the explosion of the English language which now has some 1.35 billion speakers. Clearly, new words and phrases are being created at an ever increasing rate. It is now time to recognize the worthy few in a time-worthy manner: in step with their creation, development, and subsequent dispersal into our ever-expanding tongue.
– Paul JJ Payack
