But it's not just technological terms.
If you need to get rid of that annoying Facebook friend with whom you were never really friends in the first place, you’re in luck. There’s an actual verb for that.
The New Oxford American Dictionary named “unfriend” 2009’s word of the year (“Unfriend”).
The communication technology on which so many people rely today carries with it a slew of new words. “Text,” “Google,” and even “YouTube” are used as verbs. As new technologies arise, their users must invent new words or adapt old ones in order to communicate about their new methods of communication. Inevitably, technological terms are creeping into dictionaries.
In mid-2009 the millionth word in the English language was said to have arrived, although methods of counting words are controversial. The alleged word: Web 2.0 (Schuessler).
The technological terms stand out the most in a list of new words, probably because they just don’t look like they belong in a dictionary (vlog? webisode?). However, these words actually make up only a fraction of the new words added to dictionaries every year. Merriam-Webster offers 25 of its new words for 2009 here. Note that only three of them directly refer to technology. Other words considered for the Oxford American’s word of the year included a few more Internet terms, but also ranged from “Ardi” (Ardipithecus ramidus, a recently discovered ancestor of humans) to “tramp stamp” (a particularly placed tattoo) to “death panel” (a reference to the eternal health-care controversy) (“Unfriend”). A list of some of 2008’s new words also lists the year each word was first used. The earliest is from 1881, and most date from the 1990’s or earlier and are not related to communication technology (Zimmer).
The benefits of adding so many words to the dictionaries are debatable. But in addition to generating so many new words, the Internet also has the potential to preserve old ones. David Crystal, a professor of linguistics, points out that nothing is ever lost in cyberspace. Words that are removed from dictionaries for lack of space can survive online, in “the largest corpus of attested historical language data we have ever known” (Crystal). Surely, the preservation of the language can only be a good effect of technology.
Check out Crystal’s article and his selected old words here. “Nappiness” is particularly amusing.
The New Oxford American Dictionary named “unfriend” 2009’s word of the year (“Unfriend”).
The communication technology on which so many people rely today carries with it a slew of new words. “Text,” “Google,” and even “YouTube” are used as verbs. As new technologies arise, their users must invent new words or adapt old ones in order to communicate about their new methods of communication. Inevitably, technological terms are creeping into dictionaries.
In mid-2009 the millionth word in the English language was said to have arrived, although methods of counting words are controversial. The alleged word: Web 2.0 (Schuessler).
The technological terms stand out the most in a list of new words, probably because they just don’t look like they belong in a dictionary (vlog? webisode?). However, these words actually make up only a fraction of the new words added to dictionaries every year. Merriam-Webster offers 25 of its new words for 2009 here. Note that only three of them directly refer to technology. Other words considered for the Oxford American’s word of the year included a few more Internet terms, but also ranged from “Ardi” (Ardipithecus ramidus, a recently discovered ancestor of humans) to “tramp stamp” (a particularly placed tattoo) to “death panel” (a reference to the eternal health-care controversy) (“Unfriend”). A list of some of 2008’s new words also lists the year each word was first used. The earliest is from 1881, and most date from the 1990’s or earlier and are not related to communication technology (Zimmer).
The benefits of adding so many words to the dictionaries are debatable. But in addition to generating so many new words, the Internet also has the potential to preserve old ones. David Crystal, a professor of linguistics, points out that nothing is ever lost in cyberspace. Words that are removed from dictionaries for lack of space can survive online, in “the largest corpus of attested historical language data we have ever known” (Crystal). Surely, the preservation of the language can only be a good effect of technology.
Check out Crystal’s article and his selected old words here. “Nappiness” is particularly amusing.
