If you, like me, are tired of hearing the word “nepo-baby,” I have bad news: it and 500 other new words have officially been added to the dictionary. “The term was popularized by a New York cover story last December, and has since resulted in a fair amount of debate,” writes James Hibberd of The Hollywood Reporter.
A fair amount indeed, some of it on this very site. Maya Hawke was the most recent person to denounce the term when speaking to Variety about the new movie she made with her father, Ethan Hawke.
“I had moments of insecurity about it while we were shooting the movie. But the internet doesn’t have a lot of nuances. My dad has been a massive teacher for me, and we want to work together,” she said.
Other notable new words include “trauma dumping,” or “unsolicited, one-sided sharing of traumatic or intensely negative experiences or emotions in an inappropriate setting or with people who are unprepared for this interaction.” Also known as me talking.
There’s “deadass,” or “genuinely, sincerely, or truly; in fact.” That one’s important. “Blursday” is defined as “a day not easily distinguished from other days, or the phenomenon of days running together,” so, my life. And, of course, “shower orange,” is, you guessed it, “an orange that is peeled and eaten under a steamy shower, the purported benefit being that the steam enhances the orange’s citrusy fragrance and creates a soothing experience for the person who is showering.” Whether or not the person showering eats their shower orange is, of course, entirely up to them. But hopefully not.
Many of the new words have to do with sexual identity, race, health and wellness and/or the internet. But, really, the mission here seems to be adding popular slang terms to the lexicon, which is great news for lazy writers like me, but on the other hand, do we really need “shower orange” to be defined for coming generations? Are internet fads dictionary words now? And for that matter, why did “shower orange” make the cut but “everything shower” didn’t? (I checked.)
Surely there’s some kind of metric used by the dictionary people to decide what words make the cut. With the fleeting nature of viral internet trends, maybe that metric needs to be changed.
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