Thursday, July 06, 2006

The Dictionary: A Mirror of our Soul

It's been 100 years since "Americanize" first appeared in Merriam-Webster' s Dictionary. Same goes for presidential, constitutionality and amendatory — words that remain all the rage today, along with fellow centarians immigrant, inexact and porcine.

Will this year's new words also last a century?

Let's hope spyware doesn't. Ringtones annoy us, as do drama queens. If these things no longer existed, we wouldn't need them to appear in our dictionaries.

Likewise, we wouldn't need gastric bypass without supersize.

Polyamory
and sandwich generation are not synonyms, no matter what the image suggests, so we're glad to see those between the sheets (of paper in the dictionary, that is).

And unibrow? That one's been a long time coming, eh, Bert?

Check here for more new words.

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