It didn’t take long for the colloquial of-the-moment word “staycation” to earn its official place in Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. Only a year ago did we start to regularly hear the made-up term for a vacation spent near home. Now it’s one of 100 new words added to the popular reference’s 2009 edition.
John Morse, president and publisher of Merriam-Webster Inc., says that people enjoy blending existing words, especially when they meet a need, like “frenemy,” one who pretends to be a friend but is actually an enemy. There’s also those words that are part of our vernacular for years, but take time to earn an official spot in the dictionary. Such favorites include “docusoap,” a TV series in which the real-life activities of a group of people are presented in soap-opera style; and “fan fiction,” stories involving popular fictional characters that are written by fans and often posted on the Internet.
Anyway you cut it, new words accurately reflect the times, spanning from the good (“locavore,” a person eating foods grown locally) to the not so good (“waterboarding,” an interrogation technique decried by human rights groups in which water is poured into the detainee’s mouth and nose to give the sensation of drowning).
And then there are the shockingly infectious techie terms like “vlog” that assure us we’re all moving forward at warp speed — especially when some old-school pundit says to check out their blog that contains video material.
Photo courtesy of cdw9 via Flickr.