Every year, hundreds of new slang words and phrases are added to the dictionary.
Some of them are abbreviations, like FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) and YOLO (You Only Live Once). Others are words that have been stretched into more parts of speech than originally intended — like when “trend” became a verb (“It’s trending worldwide”). Others still have emerged as we adapt our language to new technologies; think “crowdfunding,” “selfie,” “cyberbullying.”
Some words are created from scratch (no apparent etymology, eg.: gadget), by adoption or borrowing, by adding prefixes or suffixes, by truncation or clipping, by fusing or compaunding, by chaging the meaning. Language is a living thing. We can feel it changing. Parts of it become old: they drop off and are forgotten. New pieces bud out, spread into leaves, and become big branches, proliferating.
25 BRILLIANT WORDS TO ADD TO YOUR VOCABULARY
OXFORD DICTIONARY ADDS “TWERK,” “DERP,” “SELFIE,” “PHABLET,” AND MORE VOGUISH VOCABULARY
These are a few Victorian era slang me might want to reurrect:
