There were 400 new words added to the 12th edition of the OED, including cyberbullying, domestic goddess, gastric band, sexting, slow food, and textspeak. I enjoyed this article talking about how the OED has evolved.

I just wish it would evolve enough to include epicaricacy.

Actually, they're talking about the Concise OED, not the full-blown version.

Kalleh, they are gloating at the misery they're causing you.

There is quite the discussion about the word here . I am not the only one, Geoff.

Sorry about the confusion, arnie. I thought it was the regular OED.

Here is another article about the Concise Oxford Dictionary's 400 new words. I'd love a list of all 400. This article says the COED is more about "currency" whereas the OED is about "the history and majesty of the language." Some of the new COED words this article touts are: mankini, jeggings, denialist, and woot.

I loved this:

quote:

Back in 1911, its first edition prompted chatter (and, undoubtedly, wry newspaper columns) by including cutting-edge jargon such as "flapper" and "motorist." The COD's august older cousin, the Oxford English Dictionary, is all about the history and majesty of the language. This one is all about currency — or something close to it.

Over the decades, the new words function as a sort of timeline of the preoccupations and proclivities of the English-speaking world. The 1950s, for example, saw the addition of such words as "antibiotic" and "clone." In the 1960s, "breathalyzer," "astronaut" and "supermarket" were added. The sixth edition of the dictionary, published in 1976, included the phrase "switched on."

Surprisingly, "pizza" wasn't included until 1982 and "nacho" until 1990 (silly Brits, so behind!). By the mid-'90s, "wind farm" and "repetitive strain injury" were in the mix. "Botox" came in 2001, "designer baby" in 2004 and "civil partnership" and "nuclear option" in 2006. "E-reader" and "subprime" were added in 2008.

In looking for the 400 words, I found this site. It mentions more of the words added, but also some that will be deleted:

More additions:

noob
sexting
lol
slow food
upcycle
nurdle

Some deletions:
brabble: paltry noisy quarrel

growlery: place to growl in, private room, den (“what we might call a man cave these days,” Stevenson wrote on the Oxford University Press blog)

cassette player: a machine for playing back or recording audio cassette

Eurocommunism: a European form of communism which advocates the preservation of many elements of Western liberal democracy

halier: a former monetary unit of Slovakia, equal to one hundredth of a koruna [Slovakia now has the euro]

glocalization: the practice of conducting business according to both local and global considerations

script kiddie: a person who uses existing scripts or codes to hack into computers, lacking the expertise to write their own

threequel: the third film, book, event, etc. in a series; a second sequel

video jockey: a person who introduces and plays music videos on television

S-VHS: super video home system, an improved version of VHS

millennium bug: an inability in older computing software to deal correctly with dates of 1 January 2000 or later.

I suppose I could agree with those deletions.

quote:

I suppose I could agree with those deletions

A few of the deletions surprise me. Don't script kiddies exist any more? Are the no video jockeys, or do they go by another name these days?

Dkoes this mean I can't use my cassette player any more?

Erin McKean once explained the criteria by which words get in a dictionary: usefulness. So some words are removed from a concise edition of a dictionary, because they aren't as useful as other words that the editors would like to include. No big deal.

quote:

So some ... are removed ... because they aren't as useful as other ...

Don't let my wife see that pst. I'm barely hanging on here as it is.

The two I'd think might be around for awhile, if only for historical discussions, would be cassette player and VHS, though I am not sure about S-VHS. Certainly, some still have cassette players, don't they?

I still have an old VHS player, but haven't used it for years. I would think that some older cars might have cassette players still, as well.

quote:

I still have an old VHS player, but haven't used it for years. I would think that some older cars might have cassette players still, as well.

Have you been looking through my window?

I have some really precious cassette tapes of my kids and my father-in-law. I know I can have them remade into a CD, but if I didn't have those tapes, I wouldn't have had those memories.