The English language dictionary enters 2022 with 455 additional words that Merriam-Webster has just added to it, including the words dad bod,’ ‘fluffernutter,’ amirite,’ and TBH.
After the COVID-19 pandemic, a few new additions were made. The English word of 2020, “pandemic”, was the English word of that year.
The phrase ‘COVID-19,’ however, was quickly added to the dictionary – just 34 day after the coronavirus appeared in mid-March 2020.
Some of the new words added to this year’s dictionary include: digital nomad’ super-spreader’ vaccine passport,?deplatform,’FTW (for winning),’?TBH (to be truthful),’?amirite (am I correct?)),’ ‘breakthrough,’ ‘long Covid,’ and ‘copypasta’.
The new dictionary entries are divided into categories for science, tech, medicine, politics and the coronavirus.
Pictured: ‘fluffernutter,’ a sandwich made with peanut butter and marshmallow crème, has now been added to the Merriam-Webster dictionary this year
‘Dad body’ (pictured), which is a physique that is considered typical of a father, especially one that’s slightly overweight and not overly muscular, was also added into the dictionary
For new food words, Merriam-Webster has added the likes of ‘horchata,’ which is a cold sweetened beverage, ‘chincharron,’ which is a small piece of pork belly eaten as a snack, ‘goetta,’ which is a kind of meat patty, ‘fluffernutter,’ a sandwich made with peanut butter and marshmallow crème, and ‘air fryer.’
In the world of medicine, new words added to the dictionary include ‘fourth trimester,’ which is generally described as the first three-months of a newborn’s life, ‘halotherapy,’ a treatment for asthma, bronchitis, and allergies, and ‘titer,’ a kind of blood sample measurement.
Merriam-Webster has introduced the words otaku’ to pop culture. This is a person with an intense or obsessive love for the manga and anime fields. faux-hawk’ refers to a hairstyle resembling a Mohawk. dad bod’ refers a physique that is typical of a father, particularly one who is slightly overweight but not overly muscular.
The language of politics is also being expanded in this year’s dictionary. New words include ‘votea-rama’, which is an unusually large number and variety of votes and debates that take place in one day on one piece of legislation.
Merriam-Webster has added 455 words to its dictionary, including many words that emerged after the COVID-19 pandemic.
Then there is ‘whataboutism,’ the act or practice of responding to an accusation of wrongdoing by claiming that an offense committed by another is similar or worse, and ‘astroturf,’ or something falsely made to appear grassroots.
This year’s new additions unsurprisingly include a number of tech and science words, such as the likes of ‘bit rot,’ which is the tendency for digital information to degrade or become unusable over time, ‘teraflop,’ a unit of measure for the calculating speed of a computer equal to one trillion, and ‘copypasta,’ which is data that has been copied and spread widely online.
Some words, such as COVID-19, are quickly incorporated into dictionary coinage. However, it can take many years or even decades for other words to be included in the dictionary’s lexicon.
“COVID-19″ was a term that was new to the dictionary, and had not been used before. It was first entered into the dictionary 35 days ago. That is an all-time record speed,” Peter Sokolowski (editor-at-large at Merriam-Webster) told Parade.com.
People often ask, “How long does it take for a word in the dictionary to become a word?” It could be six, 10, or 60 years. It all depends. But it was always measured in years.
Webster’s Third New International Dictionary Unabridged, along with its 1993 Addenda Section, contains approximately 470,000 entries. Merriam-Webster’s website reports that the Oxford English Dictionary Second Edition has a similar number.
As of Thursday, the full list of new words was not yet available.