…since I haven't posted much lately.
Dani and I were driving in today and she told me that the word "mcjob" is going into Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary—defined as a low-paying, dead end job (and McDonald’s is NOT happy). And we’d both heard recently that “bling bling” is being added to The Oxford English Dictionary.
We talked about how, despite McDonald’s annoyance with the whole process, that’s how language grows… words enter into the language as slang, get accepted and eventually end up in the dictionary.
So, from today’s Word Spy mailing list:
"Slang… is the wholesome fermentation or eructation of those processes eternally active in language, by which froth and specks are thrown up, mostly to pass away; though occasionally to settle and permanently crystallize.
—Walt Whitman, American poet, "Slang in America", 1892
Dani and I were driving in today and she told me that the word "mcjob" is going into Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary—defined as a low-paying, dead end job (and McDonald’s is NOT happy). And we’d both heard recently that “bling bling” is being added to The Oxford English Dictionary.
We talked about how, despite McDonald’s annoyance with the whole process, that’s how language grows… words enter into the language as slang, get accepted and eventually end up in the dictionary.
So, from today’s Word Spy mailing list:
"Slang… is the wholesome fermentation or eructation of those processes eternally active in language, by which froth and specks are thrown up, mostly to pass away; though occasionally to settle and permanently crystallize.
—Walt Whitman, American poet, "Slang in America", 1892
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