100 New words in the OED

This is a selection of new words included in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) as of March 2022 from January 2020. There are 100 words here, and I skipped way more than that. I was aiming for “woke” words, LBGTQ2S words, medical words, words we have heard in casual or ordinary speech, internet words, and generally words that surprised me for being included only now, after hearing them spoken almost since childhood.

I will make occasional remarks.

  1. adorkable
  2. adulting – One of many nouns, repurposed as a verb.
  3. all-dressed
  4. anneal – One of many scientific words that have been around for decades.
  5. anti-ageing
  6. anti-black, anti-blackness
  7. anti-gay
  8. anti-piracy
  9. anti-spam
  10. anti-vaccine – So many “anti” words! Is there anything we are in favour of these days?
  11. awesomesauce
  12. baked-in – A cooking metaphor to be used in non-cooking contexts.
  13. b-day
  14. birth stain
  15. birthing room
  16. bliss point – Also called the Goldilocks zone: not too much nor too little.
  17. body-shame (-ing, -er)
  18. bogosity
  19. bombogenesis – One of many novel weather terms to sensationalize the weather.
  20. Born-Haber – The Born-Haber Cycle, a term nearly 100 years old.
  21. bread bowl
  22. breading
  23. by-catch – A fishing term that has also been around for decades.
  24. cable tie
  25. Calvin cycle – Another term that has been in science texts for decades.
  26. chapstick
  27. chatterbot
  28. chinese checkers (chequers) – Both are the same game. This one has been around for decades, and I am surprised this wasn’t accepted as English until now.
  29. christenly, christianing, Christ Jesus, Christly
  30. code-named
  31. colonialization, colonialized, colonializing
  32. comorbid (-ity)
  33. conflicted
  34. contact tracing – One of many new English terms to come from the Covid epidemic.
  35. contactless – Another term from the Covid era.
  36. cook-chilled
  37. cooked-up
  38. cookie jar
  39. Cookie Monster – Is this not still a proper noun?
  40. cookless
  41. cookware
  42. coulrophobia – Fear of clowns have been a thing for decades.
  43. Covid
  44. Covid-19 – You saw these coming.
  45. CPAP – A medical acronym now an English word.
  46. critical rationalism – What other kind is there? So, is there a critical “irrationalism”?
  47. cross border – Apparently, we haven’t crossed borders until the last 3 years.
  48. dashcam
  49. decolonial (-ize, -ization)
  50. defund (-ing)
  51. delete, delete button, delete key
  52. demisexual
  53. denialism
  54. destigmatizing
  55. dox (-ing) with one “x” – Now we know of the proper spelling, although I sense that “doxxing” (with 2 x’s) will be soon to follow.
  56. editorialization
  57. e-waste
  58. fat-shame (-er, -ing) – Really, there is shame or there is no shame. But “shaming” (now a verb) is so ubiquitous as a form of cyberbullying that we now have to divide it into categories. Not sure how that is helpful.
  59. foreignize (-ized, -izing, -ization) – Tortured english words are becoming more accepted, I see.
  60. garbageologist, garbageology
  61. gaslighter – This term has caught people’s imaginations and has been enjoying wide use as a word. While decades-old, it has only enjoyed wide use recently.
  62. gig economy
  63. gotch – I remember hearing this word used to mean underwear when I was a kid.
  64. gut level
  65. henpecking
  66. infodemic
  67. Jeez Louise
  68. jeezly – A friend poked fun at me for using this word in a sentence. Now it is part of our accepted lexicon, and I get the last laugh.
  69. Jesusy
  70. kvetching, kvetchy – Old Yiddish terms which I have seen in general use for decades have now entered the English lexicon.
  71. media literacy
  72. Muskoka chair
  73. novichok
  74. on-brand
  75. passive aggression – A thing which seems to be generally attributable to describing the behaviour of anyone we don’t like.
  76. pay gap
  77. postcolonialism, postcoloniality
  78. price gouge
  79. R0 – That’s “R-zero”.
  80. self-isolate (-ed, -ion, -ing)
  81. self-quarnatine (-ed)
  82. self-sabotage (-ing), self-saboteur
  83. shelter in place – More covid-era terms.
  84. sixty-nine (the sex position), along with its synonym: soixante-neuf – I have to be honest, I didn’t know about “soixante-neuf” becoming so widely used in English that we had adpoted it.
  85. social distancing
  86. social isolation
  87. stink eye
  88. suicide belt – Apparently, a part of the midwestern to western United States, extending from the 49th parallel to Mexico.
  89. tat
  90. triaged, triaging
  91. vax, vaxxed
  92. virtue signal (-er, -ing)
  93. vote-wise
  94. votive candle
  95. vuvuzela
  96. wankstain
  97. womxn – English can’t get much more tortured than this. Is this word meant to be spoken?
  98. zip line, zip liner, ziplining
  99. zip tie
  100. zoomer

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