New Words ’06

The editors at Webster’s New World College Dictionary and Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary have released partial lists of the hundred or so new words to be included in their dictionaries later this year.

They sure take their sweet time on some of these. Ethernet is one of ’em and it’s been around since at least 1976 and in popular use since the ’90s. Ollie, the skateboarding pop-move, was coined in ’77 and unibrow has been around since I was a kid (circa Bert) and likely before that. In addition to these too late words, there are the additions that aren’t even words, like mouse potato (one who spends too much time on the internet) and youse (plural of you).