A friend was ambling down a sidewalk in Bangalore on a lazy Sunday, deep in thought and heading nowhere, when a group of 20-something call centre kids bumped into her from behind.

As they streamed past, muttering angrily, she heard a guy among them curse, ?Bloody meanderthal!? Curious, my friend went home and did a web search of the insult. The result: meanderthal (noun): A person who walks particularly slowly and aimlessly.

The word, like most new and upstart coinages pushing their way into newspaper articles and dictionaries, was used first in the US to describe pedestrians who decide to take a lazy stroll in rush-hour traffic, much to the indignation of passers-by.

A blend of meander and Neanderthal (the predecessor of the homo sapiens), the noun and its derogatory use is probably a sign that members of the human species with a penchant for aimless, unhurried tours are also on their way to extinction!

Meanderthal isn?t the only one. New and quirky words are popping up with astounding energy on the web, finding their way into chatrooms and daily conversations and making lexicographers sit up. Some like ?metrosexual? have arrived on the word map and how! Reams have been written on this paradigm shift in urban attitudes to sexuality.

For those who came in late, a metrosexual is an urban male who does not accept that a beauty parlour is a female bastion, who can spend hours in front of the mirror styling his hair and who would rather miss a cricket match than forgo his weekly facial. The young man, naturally, must live near a metropolis and have a bank balance that can withstand regular incursions.

Sex and sexuality have spawned the most ingenious wordplay. So you have the word andropause ( from menopause) to describe the male mid-life crisis, which is marked by both biological and psychological shifts ? ranging from a dip in testosterone levels in 40-50-year-olds, a longing for the days of youth and an acute crisis of confidence.

If men are finding a life beyond football games, women, after centuries of being dismissed as bimbos, the weaker/fair sex, by men, are writing back. Thus, we have the excellent and much-needed variant of the insult bimbo (a beautiful and dumb woman), himbo. So how do you spot a himbo? He would be a man, who is drop dead gorgeous, but unintelligent or superficial.

Another word that people disgusted with shopping malls and multiplexes find indispensable is affluenza. The disease is as infectious as the flu but more long-lasting in its effects. Symptoms being the ?have money will buy? syndrome. If you have heard of relatives in Mumbai or Delhi working nights at end, take six-figure salary cheques home and blow the cash up in shopping binges and counselling sessions, you know the virus is close home.