Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Word.

So, in light of my recent engagement I thought about the arbitrariness of language sometimes. For example, the French word "fiance" is a part of our English vocabulary. It seems many times our lexicon borrows words and phrases from other places and we don't always realize it.

Then I began to wonder, who decides which words end up in the English language?

Well by doing a little bit of research it seems evident that the people in our society decide. On AskOxford.com, the dictionary makers say they decide what words to include in a dictionary based on how widely the word occurs. "We never omit a word because we think it’s not ‘good English’. (If a word is used only in very informal contexts, or only by specific groups of people, or if it is offensive in some way, we make this clear in the dictionary entry.)"

What's interesting is that those real words that are not good English are not necessarily permissible in academic or journalistic writings, right? Check out some of the new words listed below. Would your editor let you use those?

One word I noted: "mentee" Hm, I didn't know that wasn't previously a word. I use it all the time!

Other words I thought were amusing:

Riffage - guitar riffs, especially in rock music

Shoulder-surfing - the practice of spying on the user of a cash-dispensing machine or other electronic device in order to obtain their personal identification number, password, etc.

Twonk - a stupid or foolish person

Oh, and last but not least:

Crunk - n. a type of hip-hop or rap music characterized by repeated shouted catchphrases and elements typical of electronic dance music, such as prominent bass.

adj. US, chiefly black slang (of a person) very excited or full of energy.

– origin 1990s: perh. an alt. past part. of crank1 or a blend of crazy and drunk.

Wow, I remember watching a movie on "crunk" dancing my freshman year of college, but I never thought this slang word would end up in the dictionary.

Apparently, if I create a word that catches on by the majority of society, that makes it a word! Is that okely dokely? (OK) Ha, and what's funny is that I just did the spell check on this blog and all those new words are, well, not words yet. Oh well, I guess a positive is that the inclusion of these words represent what democracy is all about: language by the people, for the people. Word.

3 comments:

  1. First of all, congratulations on your engagement!

    I also frequently contemplate words and where they came from. Sometimes it can feel like an enlightenment when you realize something new about a word. Or maybe that's just me.

    The other day, a friend pointed out that breakfast can be broken up into "break" and "fast". Now, this part I had figured out on my own, but he went into a deeper analysis than I ever had. He said that it is called "breakfast" because you are "breaking" the "fast" from the night before.

    OK, so it's not really all that deep. But for someone like me who usually just equates the word "breakfast" with bacon, it was an epiphany.

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  2. Riffage - you know, I love rock, and I'm sure have busted that out before.

    Hearing that it is an actual word, though, I won't feel like a surfer doofus when I yell out "That is some bad ass riffage!" next time :-)

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  3. I'm gonna have to start using riffage in my everyday vocabulary. If there's one perk to being a journalism student, it's that you can use funny words your friends don't understand.

    Notice I didn't say big words... I said funny words.

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