New words in the English Language

[Paulclem]

Every year the Oxford Dictionary is updated and new words are added to the dictionary.

Some of the new ones this year are:

chillax
staycation
exit strategy
rougue state
waterboarding
vuvuzela
paywall
cyberslacker
internaut
quantitative easing
spot-buy
freemium
credit crunch
unfriend (US) defriend (UK)
simples
Tweetup
jeggings
snollygosters

Some sources

The saturday Times Article "It's official, now we can all just chillax"

http://www.christopherfowler.co.uk/blog/?p=3776

Do you like new words and take to them, or do you dislike new additions?

[LitNetIsGreat]

Hmm, I'm not keen on some of those, not because I am a stick-in-the-mud or that I don't realise that that's how language evolves, just because some of those sound too much like teen-talk to me:

Well I was shopping like during the credit crunch and I spot-buys one of those vuvuzela's initt and it's like me mate's saying chilax like when I tweet-ups me mate and says simples initt it be good for a laugh at me mates party an that.

Anybody who speaks like that in public needs to be shot on sight.

Anyway, not all new words are as bad, everyone uses "credit crunch" though I think people misuse it terribly and it can be quite funny. My dad for example said a while back that he was cutting back on a few things, "well it's the credit crunch" I know what he means, maybe things are a little tight, but I hardly think the banks not lending much credit to potential new businesses is forcing my dad into buying own label baked beans, sickly phrases like that soon become swallowed up by the public at large.

I can't see myself using any of those terms personally - they sound so awful, apart from maybe "snollygosters" which I haven't got a clue what it is but it sounds quite amusing. Snollygosters. Snollygosters. Hmm, how did we live without it?

.

[Paulclem]

Funny you should pick out that word. it was in the link to the blog:

‘Snollygosters’, meaning “shrewd, unprincipled people”, is an old word revived: first recorded in 1855, it fell into obscurity until the first stirrings of election fever in autumn 2009.

The proof of the words is in the speaking I suppose. I quite like internaut. It has an exciting edge to it - even though I'm in my living room. :biggrinjester:

[Niamh]

Chillax is only official now? Thats been doing the rounds over here for over the last two decades!

[Paulclem]

They consider words for a few years before they stick them in apparently.

[breathtest]

You have got to be kidding with some of these (though i know you're not). I really don't like it when two words are put together, such as chillax, and i'm hearing a word an awful lot on the radio, 'edutainment'. And i barely even listen to the radio! I guess that will be a word soon as well. Neely is right when he says some of them sound like teen-talk.