LEXICOGRAPHY
Nearly 6,000 “new” words have been added to Dictionary.com this summer, and some may surprise you.
This month, Dictionary.com announced that 5,900 new words were added to its website, along with more than 1,200 revisions to existing entries.
Online slang, artificial intelligence developments, sustainability, global cuisine and health and psychology are captured in the update.
Here’s a closer look at some of the new words added to Dictionary.com, by category.
Internet slang
■ Engagement bait (noun): Videos, text or images posted online, the purpose of which is to encourage comments, likes and similar reactions from the audience
■ Face reveal (noun): The act, especially by an online content creator, gamer or the like, of posting a photograph of their own face for the first time
■ Reply guy (noun): Man who responds to women’s social media posts overly often and in an inappropriate manner
■ Lost in the sauce (idiom): Clueless, confused or in a fog; preoccupied or disoriented; inebriated
■ Goated (adjective): Considered by many people to be the GOAT, the greatest of all time
■ Glow-up (noun): Positive transformation, generally in appearance but often also in confidence, social capital or ability
■ Kiki (noun): Gathering of close friends, especially to share the latest gossip
Fiction writing
■ Balrog (noun): Large, evil monster associated with fire and shadow
■ Fanon (noun): The interpretations of and beliefs about a fictional world, held collectively by a fan community; headcanon
■ Open world (noun): Setting in a video game that a player can explore and interact with freely, rather than by limited to specific areas or goals
■ Padawan (noun): Inexperienced person, particularly one being taught by someone more experienced
Health and psychology
■ Bioprinter (noun): Specialized 3D printer used to produce materials made of living cells
■ Longevity escape velocity (noun): Hypothetical situation in which advances in medical science mean that a person’s remaining life expectancy increases at a rate that is faster than the passage of time
■ Love bomb (noun): Gushy display of affection, often for the purpose of manipulation
■ Trauma bond (noun): Emotional bond that an abuse victim feels toward the person who is abusive to them, particularly when periods of abuse alternate with periods of kindness or affection
Artificial intelligence
■ Context window (noun): The amount of text, measured in tokens, that a large language model can process or reference at a time in order to generate a response
■ Model collapse (noun): Poor-quality output by a generative AI as a result of being trained on data that is itself generated by AI
■ Overprompt (verb): To supply an artificial intelligence system or large language model with an excessive amount of instruction, constraint or context, especially if it negatively affects the output
Sustainability
■ Agrivoltaics (noun): Practice of using the same piece of farmland both for agricultural purposes and to generate electricity through solar panels
■ Blue carbon (noun): Carbon captured from the atmosphere by coastal ecosystems and stored in the plants, sediments and algae of the ocean
■ Greenhushing (noun): The practice of a company not reporting its sustainability efforts, often in order to avoid scrutiny
■ Sponge city (noun): Type of urban planning model that emphasizes the management of flooding and stormwater through green infrastructure
Global cuisine
■ Nasi lemak (noun): Malay dish consisting of rice cooked with pandan leaves in coconut milk, often served with sambal, eggs, cucumber slices, roasted peanuts, fried anchovies or other sides
■ Pandan (noun): Screw pine, whose fragrant leaves are used for flavoring in Southeast Asian cooking
■ Pandesal (noun): (Philippines) A soft and slightly sweet bread roll, which is often served with sweet fillings or dipped in coffee or hot chocolate
■ Quesabirria (noun): (Mexico) Quesadilla whose main filling, along with melted cheese, is beef cooked in the style of birria, usually paired with a spicy, broth-like dipping sauce
Acronyms
■ IYKYK: If you know, you know. Used with an allusion to a situation, incident, etc., understood only by those who have experienced or witnessed it
■ ELI5: Explain like I’m five. Used to ask for a straightforward and simple explanation of a complex topic or concept
■ PFP: Profile picture, icon or avatar
■ STBX: Soon-to-be ex. Husband, wife, boyfriend, girlfriend, spouse or partner
