Last week Merriam-Webster dictionary announced 100 new words being added to the 2006 fall version of their college dictionary. They are a representation of our culture today, and I even recognized some of them:
- google: verb, to use the Google search engine to obtain information on the World Wide Web.
- mouse potato: noun, a person who spends a great deal of time using a computer.
- supersize: verb, to increase considerably the size, amount, or extent of.
2006 marks the bicentennial anniversary of America's first dictionary — Noah Webster's A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language.
The new words in 1806 were also representative of the culture at the time, a much simpler time, with words like opossum, vaccine, whiskey, and checkers.
So from one mouse potato to another, google the Webster site and check out the new words then and now.
