New word order

NEW WORDS

Latest entries to MerriamWebster’s Collegiate Dictionary include “sexting”, “energy drink” and “life coach”.

a way to describe untranslatable words. As a tune that won’t leave your head, “It just solidified itself in the national linguistic consciousness in America”, she said.

Earworm isn’t actually a new word for Merriam-Webster but the definition is to differentiate from the oncesole description of a specific blight on ears of corn.

The first reference found by Merriam-Webster for “aha moment” dates to 1939 in a book of psychology. Its use was sporadic until the ‘90s, when Oprah Winfrey began using it on her no longer on the air TV show.

“In fact, aha moment is so closely associated with Oprah that in 2009, she and Mutual of Omaha got involved in a legal imbroglio over Mutual of Omaha’s use of the phrase, with Oprah claiming that aha moment was her catchphrase and she had the rights to it,” Stamper said.

The case was settled out of court in 2009.

The word “tweet” led last year’s new-word highlights from Merriam-Webster. This year’s additions are more eclectic, Stamper said.

“This is a list of really descriptive and evocative, fun words. Some years, not so fun. Some years it’s a lot of science words. Some years it’s a lot of words around really heavy topics,” she said.

There are a few of those this time around: copernicium among them.

It’s a short-lived, artificially produced radioactive element that has 112 protons and is the most recent addition to the Periodic Table of Elements. It was first created in a German lab in 1996 and named for the astronomer Copernicus.

The recession blues are represented.

Merriam- Webster added “systemic risk” and a new definition for “underwater”, to describe the heartbreaking realization that you owe more on your mortgage than your property is worth. Among other new economic terms is an extra definition for “toxic”, as it relates to an “asset that has lost so much value that it cannot be sold on the market”.

Flexitarian, traced to 1998, is defined as “one whose normally meatless diet occasionally includes meat or fish”, while obesogenic (dating to 1986) is an adjective for “promoting excessive weight gain: producing obesity”.

Stamper calls flexitarian one in a long line of “you are what you eat” entries.

“As our society has become more aware of our eating patterns, we’ve seen a proliferation of its use,” she said.

Obesogenic remains a term more restricted to technical writing, Stamper said. It refers to an environment where something or some pattern — food deserts in a city, for example — is suspected of putting people at risk for obesity.

Merriam- Webster leads the dictionary market, said John Morse, president of the privately held company who wouldn’t release sales figures. He also wouldn’t release a full list of new entries, in part to put off competitors.

“Let them find their own new words,” he joked. “It’s not a cutthroat business but we like to say it’s a bare knuckles business.” Morse did acknowledge: “It’s harder for some paper dictionaries to stay in business in the era of online dictionaries.” Editor’s note: New words added to mainstream dictionaries have changed those books, which many consider old-fashioned, thick and dull, into a guide to what’s modern, trendy and interesting in society today.