oh my word!

The Oxford English Dictionary has released a list of new words included on its pages. They do this every three months, and the rate at which words are added is dizzying. This quarter’s tally is 1,400. New words have to be added, of course. Inventions and discoveries need words coined to describe them. “Tiktaalik”, for instance, is included. It’s a long extinct beast that forms part of the evolution chain of fish to land animals.

A good proportion of the latest OED batch is altered definitions to take in a slightly different nuance. “Dork” is now recognised as a verb, so you can dork someone around. I won’t be using that word. Other entries don’t even need to be entries, in my opinion. “Dumpster fire” is for describing a fire in a dumpster. I’d probably have worked that out.

The word that surprised me most was “feechie”, an adjective meaning: “Dirty, filthy, disgusting. Also (of weather) foul, rainy.” I recall using feechie, to mean dirty, half a century ago. This isn’t a new word, surely?

It made me think about words, sometimes daft words, I used to use. We all recall terms we used as children and I am reminded of a tale which, admittedly, isn’t very clever but does illustrate that we all might benefit from questioning our understanding of terminology from the past.

In school my class, Primary 4A, fell into an argument with Primary 4B. The point of contention long ago fled my memory. One 4A boy made up a stupid nickname for one of the 4B girls, as name-calling was what we did before children v children arguments had the light of modern adult standards shone upon them. Nowadays, social services would be involved and we’d have to undergo months of therapy. Back then, we forgot about it and were all friends again the next day.

The nickname, again for reasons I have no hope of recalling (if there even were reasons), was Wallet Bayonet.

This story has little merit other than I bumped into an old friend more than 35 years later. We’d been in the same class, but weren’t especially close. He mused on what Wallet Bayonet might be doing these days. I said I couldn’t even remember her real name. Which came as a surprise to him – he’d spent almost four decades believing her name actually was Wallet Bayonet.