New Words from the Oxford English Dictionary

Four times annually the staff of the New Words Division of the famed Oxford English Dictionary makes decisions on dozens of new words or two-word phrases to include in this "sacred text" of words of the English language. Of course, the dictionary folk just don't discuss new words. Most of their work is involved with updating or revising the various senses of existing words, and they nobly plow through a few thousand words a quarter in this category. I thought it would be interesting, and fun, to take you on a tour of a few new words that have been introduced in the last year of so.

Once these words make it into the dictionary, however, you lose some of the sense of their "history," since they often are introduced with attestations of their usage that goes back a century or more. Thus, by looking at the text of the OED "flat," as it were, you can't really tell when a word was included in the dictionary. This, methinks, is a deficiency of that great work--and I will have to inform them of this some day.

List of New Words To Exposit

To give you a taste of the new words, let's focus on a list of about 15 of them, from the amusing to the nearly sublime. They are: big whoop, subprime, jasm, wantaway, hellzapopin', ecopolitics, girlcott, qaly, quipao, entheogen, fattoush, ixnay, amigurumi, emo and dromaeosaurid.

1. We all know what big whoop is and are kind of amused that this "made it" in the dictionary, while loads of international culinary items, for example, still are begging at the door. Big whoop, as an interjection, "express[es] dismissiveness: 'So what?' 'Who cares?'" Apparently the first attestation of this phrase was only in 1984: "But even if you are his confidante, big whoop! Who needs that?" It can also suggest, in the phrase "no big whoop," something of importance. That is, if you say "No big whoop," you are saying that something isn't very important. If every 7th grader could be introduced to this word through the pages of the OED, many of them might fall in love with the OED (if, indeed, 7th graders still use this term).

2. Let's get serious for a moment, and learn about qipao. The OED has fewer than a dozen words beginning with "qi," from qi (pronounced "CHEE"--though some day I will have to lay out the various approaches to pronouncing Chinese words), which is the "physical life-force postulated by certain Chinese philosophers," to qiviut (KIV ee ut), which is the underwool of the musk ox. Qipao (chee PA oh) is a "dress traditionally worn by Chinese women, with a high mandarin collar, split skirt and fitted bodice with asymmetrical closure." It is synonymous with the cheongsam. Isn't one of these words enough? Well, a picture of the qipao is here, and here is an article describing the history of that beautiful and functional garment.

3. Girlcott is a clever word. It picks up on the syllable "boy," which in the original had nothing to do with being "male" [boycott was coined on the name of Capt. Charles C. Boycott, a land agent in Ireland in the late 19th century who was an early recipient of such treatment], and reverses the meaning of the entire term, so that a gircott is "a boycott carried out by a woman or group of women." The term, interestingly enough, goes back to 1891, just 11 years after "boycott" was coined. That it still is useful and even popular can be seen by this recent usage: "We were inspired by the Pittsburgh high schoolers..who had grabbed headlines and kudos last all with their 'girlcott' of insulting t-shirts made by clothier Abercrombie & Fitch." What other things might females "girlcott" these days? Ah, yes, the word is both a noun and a verb.

4. I hadn't heard ixnay previously, but now it is an official OED entry, and means "to nix" or "reject, decline, dismiss, cancel." That this word has entered elevated writing is indicated in Bernard Malamud's 1952 book on baseball, ambition and the fall of an ambitous person--The Natural: "Roy Hobbs, El Swatto, has been ixnayed on a pay raise." A quick data-base search of hundreds of newspapers shows that the word ixnay as a noun (e.g., "ixnay on the new car;" or "ixnay on the tatoo") has been used dozens of times; the verb ixnayed (to "nix") about ten. That is all the invitation I need...

5. A wantaway is a person who wishes to leave. It specifically means, in Britain, a footballer (soccer player) who wants a transfer to another club. He, literally "wants to get away." It is a synonym for "greedy." We know that such a word could never have developed in American sport because they public never thinks that an athlete could be payed too much; indeed, when A Rod's multiyear contract was announced a few years ago (in the hundreds of millions of dollars), people were amazed, but I never heard anyone in America say, "What a greedy so-and-so." But I have a suggestion on how to "Americanize" the word. Let's call a wantaway here someone who would love to escape his/her present confinement but because of the press of something (work, family, need to 'make more money,' etc.), the person can't "get away." Thus, a "wantaway" would be a person pining for a break, a trip, an adventure--but for a variety of reasons can't get there yet.

6. Jasm can be an "r-rated" word, but it is a good word, so let's carefully define it. It first appeared in 1860 in a context that suggested it meant spirit or energy or verve. "'She's just like her mother...Oh! she's just as full of jasm!"...'Now tell me what 'jasm' is.'..'If you'll take thunder and lightning, and a steamboat and a buzz-saw, and mix 'em up, and put 'em into a woman, that's jasm." I really don't think one can do much better than that to define the term. It means pep or vigor or dash or eclat.

Many have suggested that jasm may lie behind the word jazz, which wasn't attested until the 2nd decade of the 20th century. This article says a Feb. 18, 1916 newspaper story used a word spelled jaz-m but clearly meant in this context a reference to that new musical form called jazz.

Jasm is also related to jism, which is now a sort of taboo term for sperm. It wasn't always so. Indeed, the word jism antedated jasm by nearly a generation. From 1842: "At the drawgate Spicer tried it on again, but his horse was knocked up...'the gism' and the starch was effectively taken out of him by the long and desperate struggles he had been obliged to maintain." Thus, jism, like jasm, originally meant "energy" or "strength." It wasn't until the 1950s that the "taboo" significance of jism developed. And, guess what? Once that meaning developed, all of the authors we consider "great" in the last generation used the term: Samuel Beckett, John Updike, Philip Roth, to name just three. Then, just to show that it is an "equal opportunity dictionary," the OED gives a 1972 quotation from Screw magazine. I can just imagine one of the junior editors of the OED, on a warm and lazy summer afternoon, deciding that he had enough of the serious looking for words in important authors, rummage around in his desk "porno stash," come out with Screw and then, before he knew it, he was applying the same critical skills in reading Screw as in reading Updike. I would quote the Screw sentence, but it would take away the "family oriented" essay site that I have here...

Two more essays should "finish" most of these words. Hope you are enjoying the ride.

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