Look Ma – My Made Up Word’s in The Dictionary!

No really – how often do you truly hear of new words going into a dictionary – and I don’t mean the self-published slang dictionaries that keep coming and going through some sort of fly by night little ditty.

This year, Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary added a new word – a word we are truly familiar with – thanks to economic “crisis” reporting and haute little mags promoting local community and family togetherness: “STAYCATION”

I love it. It’s fun to say – and easy to imagine. And now it’s in the official dictionary!

"Our language evolves in many ways," said John Morse, president and publisher of Merriam-Webster Inc. "As we've seen from our Open Dictionary feature on Merriam-Webster.com, people enjoy blending existing words, like combining 'stay' and 'vacation' to make staycation. Staycation is a good example of a word meeting a need and establishing itself in the language very quickly. Our earliest record of use is from 2005, but it seems to have exploded into popular use in 2007."


You ever hear the phrase – “keep your friends close and your enemies even closer”?
"Another example of this kind of creative wordplay from this year's list," said Morse, "is frenemy: one who pretends to be a friend but is actually an enemy. But, in addition to these 'portmanteau words,' we have added new words from more predictable categories, like science, health, technology, and popular culture, which have also seen widespread use across a variety of publications."


Many of the new words reflect the importance of the environment (carbon footprint, green- collar), government activities (earmark, waterboarding), health and medicine (cardioprotective, locavore, naproxen, neuroprotective), pop culture (docusoap, fan fiction, flash mob, reggaeton), and online activities (sock puppet, vlog, webisode). Other words added include haram, memory foam, missalette, and zip line.
For a sample blend of the latest Collegiate Dictionary entries -- and their definitions -- please visit Merriam-Webster.com.

wonder what this means for the spelling bee word list?