At the end of very year, the big book publishing houses tell us what they consider to be the ‘Word of the year’.
This is a list of new words that will be entered into the English dictionary. The list contains new vocabulary that has become popular, widespread and fashionable in the previous year.
The words have appeared on television, in movies, newspapers, social media and anywhere else that you can read or hear the English language.
To be entered into the dictionary, the new words must have appeared several times in “reputable sources”. So that means traditional newspapers, news programmes and radio: basically, if a word has been used by The BBC, then you can bet on it appearing in the next dictionary. 🙂
WORD OF THE YEAR 2015
The word that has appeared the most frequently is usually named as the ‘word of the year’.
Last year, the word of the year was VAPE (what is Vaping?) or PHOTOBOMB, depending on which dictionary company press release you read.
This year, Collins Publishing has stated that the new word on everyone’s lips is BINGE-WATCH.
Do you know what it means? BINGE-WATCH is when you download a whole season (or a series, as we say in Britain) of a TV show like Breaking Bad, House of Cards or Doctor Who and watch all of the episodes in one session without taking a break.
The CollinsDictionary.com definition of BINGE-WATCH is: To watch a large number of television programmes (especially all the shows from one series) in succession.
Have you binge-watched anything? This year I was ill for a few days and I downloaded and watched the whole of True Detective in 1 day!
NEW VOCABULARY THIS YEAR
Other words that will appear in the latest edition of the English dictionary are…
CLEAN EATING – a diet of raw and unprocessed food
TRANSGENDER – Caityln Jenner is the most famous example of this, when someone chooses to change gender (from man to woman or woman to man)
DADBOD – a male binge-watcher who is fat or who has a beer belly
SHAMING – used a lot on social media to ‘name and shame’ people who have done something wrong. Also used for body image related issues.
HISTORY OF ENGLISH
New words are always being added to English… to see the History of English and when different words were added in the past CLICK HERE to play with our new interactive content: The History of the English Language
