"It's Fantacular!" (And Only Slightly Confurbing)

New Words To Live By


Since we obviously don't have enough words in the English language to communicate effectively, every year around this time, the fine folks over at Mirriam-Webster announce their newest entries for their latest version of America's best-selling dictionary, Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition. It's not an easy job selecting which words are deemed worthy enough for submission, and even though we at I Read It On The Internet have done our best in the past to offer up our own selection (see previous story) it's still up to those fine folks at Mirriam-Webster to be The Deciders.



"I Am STILL The Decider,
And That Word Is Copywrited!"


And even though we would have loved to see our own previous suggestions from last year chosen (they weren't) we won't hold that against them. We'll even make a few more suggestions for them to ignore....


First up, let's take a look at the new words they seem to think are better than squidchops, and dickwads (seriously, we're not bitter). The ginormous winner this year is .....Ginormous! Yes, the fine folks at Mirriam-Webster have chosen their Big New Word to be an actual merger of two existing words, Gigantic and Enormous. Many of us have heard people actually using this word. And many of us have actually thrown up in our own mouths every time we hear this stupid word being used. But, hey, if the fine folks at Mirriam-Webster like it, then who are we to say otherwise (seriously, we've gotten over last year's snub, and we are NOT bitter!).



In addition to Ginormous, several other new words that have gotten the official Miriam-Webster Seal-of-Approval are:



Crunk - "a style of rap music featuring repetitive chants and rapid dance rhythms".
Here again, we have a word created from two existing words, crank and drunk, which if you look up those two words in the dictionary, you'll see a picture of my Uncle Lester (even though he's not quite hip enough to wear crunkteeth).



Nocebo - "a harmless substance that when taken by a patient is associated with harmful effects due to negative expectations or the psychological condition of the patient".
Once again, a hybrid word consisting of a Placebo, which is a harmless substance taken by a patient with no side effects, and the word....uh, Not? Since it's.....not harmless?!



DVR - "digital video recorder".
Word on the street is that the word TiVo is pretty pissed off at being snubbed this year.


So once again, we here at I Read It On The Internet have taken it upon ourselves to submit a few more additional words for next year's edition. Now that we see a trend of merged words developing, here's a few merged words of our own....


Spectastic (adj. - spek-tas-tik )
For times when you feel that something is both spectacular AND fantastic. Also acceptable is the word Fantacular!

Beautquisite (adj. - be-yoot-skwiz-it)
A perfect word for someone who is a combination of beautiful AND exquisite. Also can be pronounced as Exquisiful!

Confurbing (adj. - con-fer-bing)
The process of combining existing words can be a combination of confusing and disturbing. It can also be quite Disfusing!




Maybe next year, we'll see some of these new words submitted to the Mer-Web Collegionary, Twelfth Edition!



A Work In Progress