At the end of the third quarter of 2022, the Oxford English Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, and Dictionary.com all released new additions to their editions. If the lexicographers dictionaries employ do their jobs seriously, we can learn a lot about English-speaking society from what they add. And many, though not all, do.
Some of what we learn from the recent batch is just silly: Several dictionaries have added the phrase “pumpkin spice,” reflecting the almost certainly correct determination that the awful October flavor syrup is here to stay, along with the words for it. Merriam-Webster and Dictionary.com add “shrinkflation.” It’s a playful word for a grim phenomenon that’s making you poorer in practical terms as we speak: “the practice of reducing a product’s amount or volume per unit while continuing to offer it at the same price.”
Then there are words and phrases that seem to be added just because nobody had gotten around to adding them before. It’s a big language, after all. The OED has just added the noun “knifepoint,” as in “held at….” That has been around for a while. And newer but robustly in usage is “wireless network.” Merriam-Webster just added “use case” and “free dive,” of which the latter is an ancient practice and not a new term.
But most “new words” come from the forces that are changing society. There are any number of those forces. The biggest are internet culture, the culture war over identity issues that internet culture fomented, and the extreme political polarization that the culture war over identity issues fomented. Merriam-Webster has added “sus,” “lewk,” the adjectival “cringe,” and the verb “yeet.” I leave it to older readers to look these up, but be assured they are internet words for internet people with internet brains. Their addition to the dictionary is not objectionable, as these kinds of words, people, and brains are, increasingly, what comprise the English language. Also not objectionable is how much verbiage originating in trans healthcare is being added. OED adds “breast binding.” That’s good because it is a thing and that’s the term for it.
“We strive to keep pace with the ever-changing English language — a language whose changes come from you, the people who use it,” write the Dictionary.com editors in their introduction to the list of new words. But the problem with the internet and the people who live on it too much of the time is that they become absorbed by politics that don’t reflect the citizens of the real world — or even the broader internet outside their own bubble. Dictionary.com’s entries reflect a staff with lexical judgment impaired by obsessive and odd political interests. The institution adds “45,” the nickname for former President Donald Trump, as well as “shadow docket,” a term for an ordinary Supreme Court procedure that has, lately, been given a sinister connotation by the intellectually discreditable work of law professor Steve Vladeck, the author of The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic.
Moreover, Dictionary.com now advises the correct spelling of the location of the famous nuclear meltdown, “Chornobyl,” transliterated from Ukrainian more directly. While I have written that changing from Kiev to Kyiv is something we should push, the meltdown was a global news event, so unlike the literal battle for the control of Kyiv, American English usage of “Chornobyl” is a losing battle.
Worse, though, is Dictionary.com’s suite of entries relating to culture war issues, including “bachelorx party” and “sologamy.” “Sologamy,” a noun, is the “the practice or state of marriage to one’s self.” Come on, now. Stuff like this is just embarrassing to see institutions put their stamp on. Exactly zero jurisdictions in the world are even considering making this a thing, because it makes no sense. Marriage, in its religious and legal senses, grants duties and rights toward your spouse, but you already have all the duties and rights toward yourself possible. Are sologamous people seeking to gain the right to visit themselves in the hospital or to pass money to themselves tax-free? Perhaps it is for the mentally ill. When I criticize people who say, “Marriage is between one man and one woman,” I’m not trying to replace it with “marriage is between one woke white woman with TikTok-induced multiple personality disorder and one of her alters.”
