Clicktivism and YOLO enter the dictionary

Many new words are expressions of, and for, technological culture

My wife and I went to a show in downtown Montreal last week at which most of the other people in attendance did not have grey hair. As we stood waiting for the music to begin, I watched a young woman pull out her smartphone and check her Twitter feed. She put the device away, glanced around the crowd for four or five seconds, reached for the phone again, and scrolled through the tweets once more. Her brain, it struck me, was hardwired for flight — I could imagine her alone on a steppe or a plain, watching out for lions or wolves. Instead here she was, alone in a loud throng of strangers, watching out for tweets.

She seemed incapable of repose. And it struck me that a lot of new words have their origin at this kind of moment — when an inner restlessness kicks in, fostered by technology yet arising from a deeper need or desire.

Not all of the words added to the Oxford English Dictionary this month were born on mobile devices — they include everything from “neuroplasticity” and the Second World War term “Kindertransport” to “Oompa Loompa,” coined by the children’s author Roald Dahl. (Oompa Loompas have leaped out of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to mean anybody who’s unusually short or who has orange-looking skin.)

Yet many of the new official words belong to the Twitter age. They are expressions of and for a technological culture.

“Clickbait,” for instance. The OED defines it as “Internet content whose main purpose is to encourage users to follow a link to a web page, especially where that web page is considered to be of low quality or value.” Joining clickbait in the vast dictionary is “clicktivism,” defined as “the practice of signalling support for a political or social cause by means of the Internet, through social media, online petitions, etc., rather than by more substantive involvement.” If you don’t like a particular act of clicktivism, you can signal your displeasure by calling it “slacktivism” — another new entry to the OED. Or you can show your happiness by uttering “squee!” As a synonym for squeak or squeal, this goes back to the 19th century, but “squee” has taken on new life online.

To me, the most intriguing of September’s additions to the dictionary is YOLO, an acronym for “you only live once.” Earlier generations expressed this notion by the Latin phrase “carpe diem”— seize the day. YOLO is popular, I’m told, as a hashtag on Twitter — but its use has spread beyond social media. In 2013, for example, an article in the culture section of Newsweek included the following sentence: “Olympic hurdler Lolo Jones qualified in bobsled, but it remains to be seen whether Lolo’s YOLO spirit will result in LOLs back home.” (“Laughing Out Loud,” that is; although in that sentence, it might be better spelled out as “lots of laughs.”)

I can’t help wondering if YOLO will eventually migrate into lowercase letters and look like a normal word. Any time I see relentless capital letters, I feel I’m being shouted at.

On a quieter note: In my last column, I described the tremendous influence of Arabic on the English language. Professor Mrugank Thakor of Concordia University has upbraided me for suggesting that the idea of zero was invented by speakers of Arabic. He asserts that “what used to be called the Arabic numeral system is now called the Hindu-Arabic numeral system;” I would say that, rightly or wrongly, both phrases are in use. But it’s beyond question that, as Prof. Thakor writes, “the concept of zero as a digit in the decimal system arose in India around the 5th century AD.” Arabic was the linguistic vessel by which the Sanskrit idea of zero was transmitted to the West.

To me, the most intriguing addition is YOLO, an acronym for ‘you only live once.’