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Saturday, July 31, 2010
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Oxford dictionary adds ‘egosurf,’ ‘cyberslacker,’ ‘bootylicious’
By Mandy Sharp
"Bada bing," the catchphrase made famous by hit television show
"The Sopranos," as well as the well-known Italian restaurant
East Side Mario’s, has earned a place alongside 3,000 other new
entries in the latest edition of the Oxford Dictionary of English, the
largest one-volume dictionary of the English language, which was published
on Thursday. "Reality TV," "SARS" and "Muggle,"
have also been added. "Muggle", meaning someone lacking magic
powers from the Harry Potter novels by author J.K. Rowling. But I'm sure
you all knew that already, because Harry Potter is one of the most well
known books of last year, therefore we assume you have read all of them…
right?
The Oxford Dictionary describes "bada bing" ("bada bing bada boom") as an exclamation to emphasize that something will happen effortlessly and predictably. "Eh, Bada Boom Bada Bing!" From those awful East Side Mario’s commercials, how annoying are they?
From the latest pop culture "Boy" and "Girl bands," comes the words "bootylicious" and "turntablist", a DJ talented at spinning records. What will they come up with next? "Homie", "Chillin' ", "Fo'Shizzle". Now if those end up in the dictionary, I just might have to send a personalized letter/email to the wonderful people who make these decisions.
Though some entries may confuse and anger linguistic purists, not to mention someone like myself, the dictionary’s publishers say words are only included if they are well-known and have proven they can pass the test of time. Okay so who’s to say that these are going to pass the test of time? How long have they been around for now? Maybe two years? What is this world coming to?
There was an online pole asking what we thought the best word added was, and of course you had to vote in order to see any sort of results, so me, being me, voted hacktivist. -_-' The results are in, Bootylicious is in first place with 46%, Bada bing is in second with 35%, hacktivist is in third with 6%(and I like to think its all because of my vote thank you), boy band/girl band is tied with egosurf with 5%, and last but not least turntablist is at 3%.
It said stuff like comics, newspapers, TV scripts, novels, scholarly journals and the Web are all looked at as fonts for new words. I'm not even going to touch on this one.
The Internet, another area where new words have come out, has added "cyberslacker," "egosurf" and "hacktivist" to the dictionary, which centers on the living language and is separate from the more established and multi-volume Oxford English Dictionary. Oh gosh, what’s next, words like "ur," "hugglez," and the infamous "LOL?" As far as I'm concerned most of the new "words" that they are adding in are slang, not real words. But someone like me has no say, only a humble opinion.
Mandy is our welcomed youth contributor reporting an insightful view from a teen's perspective...from a youthful incentive that predicates promise for the future. Mandy can be reached at email.
The opinions and views of our contributors are not necessarily parallel of the collective organizers and principles responsible for the production and presentation of the Rice Lake Today website.
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