Monday, August 29, 2011

New Words in Webster's

It's always fun to see lists of the new words the major dictionary companies accept each year and add to their dictionaries. The words are a great reflection of our changing world, new trends, new ideas.

Here are a couple of the 150 that got added to Merriam-Webster's College Dictionary this year. Actually, I'm rather surprised they didn't get in sooner.

bromance: a close nonsexual friendship between men.

cougar: a middle-aged woman seeking a romantic relationship with a younger man.

crowdsourcing: the practice of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people and especially from the online community rather than from traditional employees or suppliers.

social media: forms of electronic communication (as Web sites for social networking and microblogging) through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content (as videos).

tweet: a post made on the Twitter online message service.

See the Publishers Weekly blog for a longer article and list:
http://blogs.publishersweekly.com/blogs/PWxyz/?p=6615&utm_source=Publishers+Weekly%27s+PW+Daily&utm_campaign=c1236bebe7-UA-15906914-1&utm_medium=email

3 comments:

Barbara Elsborg said...

Bromance? Am I out of the loop! I've never heard that. What about Womance for women friends who don't fancy each other? Though that sounds like someone has a lisp.

ECPI Editors said...

Well, Barb, you obviously don't watch the Kardashians on TV (gag, gag). It's frequently mentioned that the brother (what IS his name) of Kloe, Kim and Kourtney has a bromance with his sisters' spouses/SOs.

Raelene

Barbara Elsborg said...

Ah, this is what comes of living in the UK and not watching much TV - I've never heard of the Kardashians - just as well by the sounds of it. LOL