Springfield, Massachusetts, July 6 (AP): Need tips on how to groom a unibrow or soul patch? Just google it. Or get a mouse potato to do it for you. If you’re still lost, grab the latest edition of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary for a definition of those and about 100 other words that have made their way into its pages.
But be warned: you might come across a drama queen (a person given to often excessively emotional performances or reactions), an empty suit (an ineffectual executive), or a himbo (an attractive but vacuous man ? think “male bimbo”).
“We try to have a mix that address the wide range of people’s information needs when adding new words,” said John Morse, president of the Springfield-based dictionary publisher. “It could be a technical term or some lighthearted slang that sends people to a dictionary.”
To make it into the dictionary, a word has to be more than a flash-in-the-pan fad. It needs staying power.
“We need evidence that the word is showing up in publications that people are reading on an everyday basis,” Morse said. Lexicographers comb through newspapers, entertainment magazines, trade journals and websites in search of new words and phrases.
Along with defining an intensive computer user as a “mouse potato” (a popular twist on the late 1990’s “couch potato” entry), they have given formal definition to one of the Internet’s most recognisable names.
“Google is definitely a verb,” said Dan Reynolds, a salesman at YES Computers. “Google has become like a secondary brain for a lot of people. If you want quick info on something, that’s what you do. You google it.”
Respectful of the trademark, Merriam-Webster has lowercased the entry but maintains the capitalisation while explaining that the verb means “to use the Google search engine” to retrieve online information. “We’re defining a trademark as a verb, just like we did with the word xerox,” Morse said.
But don’t think the folks at Merriam-Webster are just a bunch of “computer geeks” (the phrase entered the dictionary three years ago) ? there’s a hip side to tracking words. They’re up on their “bling” as a way of describing glitzy jewellery.
