'F-bomb' And 'Sexting', Among Other Stupid Words, Headed To The Merriam-Webster Dictionary
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via USA Today:
F-bomb. Man cave. Sexting. Bucket list.
These are just some of the words that will be given official definitions in the 2012 edition of Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary.
Surprisingly, F-bomb has a longer history than I assumed. According to the AP:
Kory Stamper, an associate editor for Merriam-Webster, said she and her fellow word spies at the Massachusetts company traced it back to 1988, in a Newsday story that had the now-dead Mets catcher Gary Carter talking about how he had given them up, along with other profanities.
But the word didn't really take off until the late '90s, after Bobby Knight went heavy on the F-bombs during a locker room tirade.
"We saw another huge spike after Dick Cheney dropped an F-bomb in the Senate in 2004," and again in 2010 when Vice President Joe Biden did the same thing in the same place, Stamper said.
I get that English is an expanding and evolving language, and we need to keep on top of that kind of thing, but I am really, really upset that man cave is being included. It's a stupid term that doesn't deserve any kind of acknowledgement, whatsoever. But I kind of gave up after LOL was included in the dictionary.
What do you think, folks? Are these words worthy of definitions?
News by Rob W. Hart
Rob W. Hart is the class director at LitReactor, as well as the associate publisher for MysteriousPress.com. He's the author of The Last Safe Place: A Zombie Novella, and his short stories have appeared in Shotgun Honey, Thuglit, Crime Factory, and Needle: A Magazine of Noir. He lives in New York City, and you can find his website at www.robwhart.com.
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I doubt these words have the staying power of more established terms. Man cave will go out of vogue, and it will no longer be part of the lexicon of whoever uses it.
remember when "dis" was all the rage? Was it ever included in a dictionary? I haven't heard it in years.
I think dictionaries should publish this kind of thing in a side publication - like online terms, collections of historical slang (23 skidoo), etc...
I'm with post. Well said.
Maybe it is more important that they be added to the dictionary if they aren't going to have staying power. Looking forward, as a reader and a writer, if you had never heard the word "F-bomb" and were reading a piece of fiction from our era that refers to it, where would you go? In a hundred years, some reader is going to be thankful it is in there.
I think man cave made the cut because it crossed into the real estate industry. An agent showing a house will throw that term out as appropriate to make a property appealing to those man cave types. It is also a very popular term thrown around on those annoying DIY shows. But I agree as to it's stupidness.
Well said, Jack.
I wish I had an F-bombing man cave. *sigh*
The language is a shark. It has to move or die, even when it is f-bombingly ugly.