The list signals the day-to-day mania of vocab inventory. Sisyphus got lucky,rolling his rock uphill,compared to a lexicographer’s quest of filing each newcomer in the human script. Besides,maybe the hyphen dumped by easybeat has decreed the word as new,just as sparkie may be common slang here but a revelation in the UK.
All these new additions to the dictionary are enough to give traditionalists a menty-b.iStock
Next among the intakes are words familiar to most that have gained a fresh nuance over time. Steve McQueen knew all aboutThe Blob in 1958,an alien jelly fond of human flesh,as distinct from the reborn blob of 2023,defined as “an unstructured collection of data,especially in binary code,stored as a single entity.”
Glimmer is a second example,hailed as trigger’s flipside. On the Macquarie Dictionary’s blog,where May novelties are listed,glimmer means “something that induces a feeling of peace and safety”. A ray of light in your day,the anti-trigger. Just as doomscrolling – the grievous ritual of reading online news – has its lighter opposite in gleefreshing,where we seek cat videos and equally smile-worthy stuff.
Cake gets two bites within the 2023 induction. First is cakeism,a Brexit coinage for the doctrine of having one’s cake and eating it too. While cakeage,entry #2,is a sugary extension of corkage (or,nowadays,screwage),where a restaurant surcharges patrons for an outsourced gateau.
Mid-year,every dictionary shares their updated manifests,a longlist primed for the December play-offs. That’s when words like teal (2022),strollout (2021) and Karen (2020) score the accolades as overall winners,terms to epitomise the year that just endured.
COVID-19,of course,colours those last two winners,explaining why Oxford and Merriam-Webster have counted deep-clean,subvariant and pre-pandemic among its recent acquisitions. Though the true darlings are the offbeat arrivals,such as rage-farm (to publish false or misleading material as a means of cultivating uproar) and kink-shame (to mock another for their sexual preferences),trauma-dumping (emotional unloading) and password child (the anointed kid implicated in the family’s default passwords).
Suffix-clicking looms as a popular sport,judging by the latest gang. You see the reflex in metaverse and hellscape,queerbaiting and lamestream (the derisive nickname of mainstream). Meanwhile,washing continues to excel,the whitewash template first being emulated by greenwash,sportswash and now extending into pinkwash (a tokenised gay-friendliness to flog merch) and wokewash (to use social justice issues as part of a marketing strategy).
Hypocorism is a further trend,deriving from endearment in Greek. This is the Australian habit of turning things cutesy,where,say,Shazza gets a brolly as a Chrissy prezzie. God preserve us,but that same heavy petting has applied to the cost of living (or cozzie livs in the latest audit),gender-neutral (try gendy-nooch) and charisma,alias rizz. Traditionalists by now will be suffering a menty-b (or mental breakdown).
Six months is a long time in lexicography. Golly gosh,anything can happen between now and Chrissy,word-wise. Worldwide too,with language poised to capture the moments,from ebikes to stalkerware,from dark kitchens to shovel-ready deepfakery. Dictionaries can only observe,along withWordplay columnists,chronicling how the global dialogue changes,and what labels we summon to mark those shifts. Come August,no question,should a new blob invade,then our vocabulary will be better equipped than our military.
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