New Words Now
Posted by: Mary Ellen
If you’re looking for definitions of terms like Baling out (as in Christian Bale’s major tantrum on the set of Terminator Salvation), Blago (someone who ruins something beyond repair, like former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich), Madoffing (to knowlingly swindle someone), and Spitzer’d (getting caught in a major act of hypocrisy), you won’t find them in a regular dictionary, but you will find them in the Cramer-Krasselt Cultural Dictionary. Cramer-Krasselt is an advertising agency that started compiling this dictionary to help clients stay in touch with cultural trends because “the so-called keepers of our Lexicon aren’t quite keeping up.” The entries were found online in blogs and discussion forums.
A few more examples:
Blackburied (adj) The feeling of being overwhlemed by the constant flood of emails and work from your mobile devide.
Frugalista (n) A frugal, yet fashionable person.
Scuppie (n) Socially conscious urban professional.
Tweet-up (n) People who meet on Twitter and then meet up in the real world.
Whole grazer (n) One who goes to Whole Foods in order to try every free sample, but can’t actually afford to shop there.
Yellular (n) The raised volume of one’s speech due to the misguided belief that raising one’s voice will help overcome a poor connection.
To find more terms that haven’t yet been–and may never be– sanctioned by standard dictionaries, a few to sites to try are Urban Dictionary (where you’ll see Hiking in Appalachia, also known as extramarital affair), Wordspy, and The Double-Tongued Dictionary.
July 6th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
I love this! It drives me nuts sometimes trying to find the definitions to some of the latest slang.