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.
- adorkable
- adulting – One of many nouns, repurposed as a verb.
- all-dressed
- anneal – One of many scientific words that have been around for decades.
- anti-ageing
- anti-black, anti-blackness
- anti-gay
- anti-piracy
- anti-spam
- anti-vaccine – So many “anti” words! Is there anything we are in favour of these days?
- awesomesauce
- baked-in – A cooking metaphor to be used in non-cooking contexts.
- b-day
- birth stain
- birthing room
- bliss point – Also called the Goldilocks zone: not too much nor too little.
- body-shame (-ing, -er)
- bogosity
- bombogenesis – One of many novel weather terms to sensationalize the weather.
- Born-Haber – The Born-Haber Cycle, a term nearly 100 years old.
- bread bowl
- breading
- by-catch – A fishing term that has also been around for decades.
- cable tie
- Calvin cycle – Another term that has been in science texts for decades.
- chapstick
- chatterbot
- 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.
- christenly, christianing, Christ Jesus, Christly
- code-named
- colonialization, colonialized, colonializing
- comorbid (-ity)
- conflicted
- contact tracing – One of many new English terms to come from the Covid epidemic.
- contactless – Another term from the Covid era.
- cook-chilled
- cooked-up
- cookie jar
- Cookie Monster – Is this not still a proper noun?
- cookless
- cookware
- coulrophobia – Fear of clowns have been a thing for decades.
- Covid
- Covid-19 – You saw these coming.
- CPAP – A medical acronym now an English word.
- critical rationalism – What other kind is there? So, is there a critical “irrationalism”?
- cross border – Apparently, we haven’t crossed borders until the last 3 years.
- dashcam
- decolonial (-ize, -ization)
- defund (-ing)
- delete, delete button, delete key
- demisexual
- denialism
- destigmatizing
- 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.
- editorialization
- e-waste
- 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.
- foreignize (-ized, -izing, -ization) – Tortured english words are becoming more accepted, I see.
- garbageologist, garbageology
- 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.
- gig economy
- gotch – I remember hearing this word used to mean underwear when I was a kid.
- gut level
- henpecking
- infodemic
- Jeez Louise
- 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.
- Jesusy
- kvetching, kvetchy – Old Yiddish terms which I have seen in general use for decades have now entered the English lexicon.
- media literacy
- Muskoka chair
- novichok
- on-brand
- passive aggression – A thing which seems to be generally attributable to describing the behaviour of anyone we don’t like.
- pay gap
- postcolonialism, postcoloniality
- price gouge
- R0 – That’s “R-zero”.
- self-isolate (-ed, -ion, -ing)
- self-quarnatine (-ed)
- self-sabotage (-ing), self-saboteur
- shelter in place – More covid-era terms.
- 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.
- social distancing
- social isolation
- stink eye
- suicide belt – Apparently, a part of the midwestern to western United States, extending from the 49th parallel to Mexico.
- tat
- triaged, triaging
- vax, vaxxed
- virtue signal (-er, -ing)
- vote-wise
- votive candle
- vuvuzela
- wankstain
- womxn – English can’t get much more tortured than this. Is this word meant to be spoken?
- zip line, zip liner, ziplining
- zip tie
- zoomer
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