06/09/2022
Back in April, Dictionary.com updated its lexicon with a number of terms that had sprung up seemingly overnight, including COVID-19, novel coronavirus, and even rona. Now, as a testament to just how fast language evolves, the online dictionary has added 650 more.
Though the terms aren’t all quite as new as rona, they’ve all recently become prevalent enough to warrant their own dictionary entries. And they’re not all related to public health crises, either. New slang includes amirite, a truncated version of Am I right?; and zhuzh, a verb meaning “to make (something) more lively and interesting, stylish, or appealing, as by a small change or addition” (it can also be used as a noun).
There’s a handful of phrases that describe pets used for service or therapy—assistance animal, comfort animal, and emotional support animal, among others—and a couple that help capture the sometimes bizarre landscape of modern parenting. Sharent, a portmanteau of share and parent, refers to the act of chronicling your child’s life on social media (or a parent who does it); and extravagant methods of publicly announcing an unborn baby’s gender are now so widespread that gender reveal is a dictionary-recognized term. Some terms address racist behaviors—whitesplain and brownface, for example—while others reflect how certain people of color describe their specific ethnicities; Afro-Latina, Afro-Latino, and Afro-Latinx each have an entry, as do Pinay, Pinoy, and Pinxy.
In addition to the new entries, Dictionary.com has also added 2100 new definitions to existing entries and revised another 11,000 existing definitions—making it the site’s largest update ever. Black in reference to ethnicity is now a separate entry from the color black, and lexicographers have also combed through the dictionary to capitalize Black wherever it appears in other entries. They’ve also replaced homosexuality—now often considered an outdated clinical term with a negative connotation—with gayness in other entries, and addict with a person addicted to or a habitual user of. In short, people are constantly making language more inclusive and sensitive, and Dictionary.com is working to represent those changes in the dictionary.
Take a look at 50 of Dictionary.com’s new words and phrases below, and learn more about the updates here.
Af
Afro-Latina
Afro-Latino
Afro-Latinx
Agile development
Amirite
Assistance animal
Battle royale
Bombogenesis
Brownface
Cap and trade
Comfort animal
Community management
Companion animal
Conservation dependent
Conservation status
Contouring
Critically endangered
DGAF
Dunning-Kruger effect
Ecoanxiety
Emissions trading
Emotional labor
Emotional support animal
Empty suit
Extinct in the wild
Filipinx
Filipina
Gender reveal
GOAT
Hodophobia
Information bubble
Ish
Jabroni
Janky
MeToo
Natural language processing
Nothingburger
Off-grid
Pinay
Pinoy
Pinxy
Ratio
Sharent
Swole
Techlash
Therapy animal
Whitesplain
World-building
Zhuzh
