‘Frenemy’, ’staycations’ and ‘vlog’ enter Merriam-Webster’s dictionary
July 10th, 2009 - 5:18 pm ICT by ANI ( Leave a comment )Melbourne, July 10 (ANI): Don’t know what people mean when they use words like ‘frenemy’, ’staycations’, ‘flash mob’ and ‘vlog’? Well, now you can look for these words in a dictionary.
About 100 new words, which reflect the current English language, have reportedly been added to the Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary.
And many of these additions include ‘locavore’(which is used to describe someone who only eats locally-grown food), ‘vlog’ (a video-blog’s new name) and ‘frenemy’ (a person who acts like a friend but is really an enemy).
Other words that have made it to the dictionary are ‘flash mob’, which is a group of people who go to a designated public place for some sort of action; and ’staycation’, where someone takes leave from work but stays at home for the duration.
John Morse, the president and publisher of the dictionary company, said that many of the latest additions were linked to technology and the environment.
The phrase ‘green-collar’, which describes someone who works to protect the natural environment, will be placed with more traditional working definitions like that of ‘white-collar’ and ‘blue-collar’ in the dictionary.
“These are not new words in the language, by any means. These really are words now likely to show up in The New York Times, in The Wall Street Journal,” News.com.au quoted Morse as saying.
He claimed that that when words were quite commonly used in conversations, it was hard for the dictionary to ignore them. (ANI)
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