Does the word “moist” scare you? Would you buy a product called “moist mayo”?
These questions and more come to mind in the wake of a larger-than-life jar of mayonnaise showing up on the steps of Merriam-Webster’s headquarters in Springfield on Monday.
The words “real moist” are front and center on the jar. The 6-foot-4 jar was placed by none other than Kraft Real Mayo, a branch of the company known for its macaroni and cheese meals.
The company’s mission is to get the word “moist” searched online as much as possible to receive Merriam-Webster’s coveted “Word of the Year” award — and change perception of the word.
In years past, the dictionary company’s award was given to gaslighting in 2022, vaccine in 2021, and pandemic in 2020.
The word “moist” has received decades of bad rap, thanks to 2010s internet. Urban Dictionary refers to “moist” as “a word people pretend to hate because the internet told them to.”
Kraft Real Mayo Brand Manager Frances Sabatier said most people don’t know why they don’t like the word.
“Kraft Real Mayo has such a devoted fanbase of mayo lovers, and we want to embolden them to help us change the perception by searching the word ‘moist’ online so many times that it’s elected Merriam-Webster’s word of the year,” Sabatier wrote in an email.
Maisel Torres, 17, of Springfield, talks about the giant mayonnaise jar he encountered while walking down Federal Street past Merriam-Webster Dictionary headquarters. The Kraft food company delivered the jar to make their case for designating "moist" the dictionary's "word of the year". Don Treeger / The Republican) 11/8/2023The Republican
Maisel Torres, 17, came across the outsized jar Wednesday afternoon. He said the it brings color to the Federal Street neighborhood. He added that mayonnaise is not the word that comes to mind when he hears the word “moist.”
Instead, it’s cake and brownies.
However, Kevin Drayton, of Springfield, said he does think of mayonnaise when he hears “moist.”
A Merriam-Webster representative could not be reached for comment.
According to its website, however, the word was pronounced “moiste” by the Anglo-French and was first used in the 14th century.
The brand has more than the Springfield stunt in mind. It is planning to host a “Search-A-Thon” livestream on Twitch on Nov. 18 with the help of gaming influencers who intend to encourage viewers to search the word “moist” as much as possible, Sabatier said.
In addition to the that, Kraft plans paid advertisements on the social media sites Instagram, TikTok and Reddit, as well as on-the-ground canvassers, all designed to raise awareness about its “Search Moist” campaign.
Samsung's flagship Galaxy smartphones launching next year will offer live translations of calls using AI and other upped AI features, the South Korean tech giant said on Thursday.
Live translation of calls is just one feature among Samsung's new Galaxy AI brand, which is a "comprehensive mobile AI experience" based on one-device AI developed by the company and cloud-based AI from its partners.
Galaxy AI is "coming early next year," Samsung said, indicating that it is highly likely to be introduced on the Galaxy S24 series that will debut at that time.
According to Samsung, the translation feature, called AI Live Translate Call, is integrated into the native call feature so third-party apps won't be needed.
As you speak during a call with someone speaking another language, audio, and text translation will appear in real-time, the company said.
The feature is offered through on-device AI so that private conversations won't leave the phone, Samsung added.
"Galaxy AI is our most comprehensive intelligence offering to date, and it will change how we think about our phones forever.," Wonjoon Choi, Head of R&D at Samsung MX __ the company's smartphone business unit __ said.
Samsung seems poised to launch more AI features on its products. On Wednesday, the company unveiled its generative AI model called Samsung Gauss, which consists of language, code, and image models. Samsung said Samsung Gauss will be applied to various products in the future.
The days of having a dictionary on your bookshelf are numbered. But that’s OK, because everyone already walks around with a dictionary – not the one on your phone, but the one in your head.
Just like a physical dictionary, your mental dictionary contains information about words. This includes the letters, sounds and meaning, or semantics, of words, as well as information about parts of speech and how you can fit words together to form grammatical sentences. Your mental dictionary is also like a thesaurus. It can help you connect words and see how they might be similar in meaning, sound or spelling.
As a researcher who studies word retrieval, or how you quickly and accurately pull words out of your memory to communicate, I’m intrigued by how words are organized in our mental dictionaries. Everyone’s mental dictionary is a little bit different. And I’m even more intrigued by how we can restore the content of our mental dictionaries or improve our use of them, particularly for those who have language disorders.
Language is part of what makes humans special, and I believe everyone deserves the chance to use their words with others.
Your mental dictionary
While a physical dictionary is helpful for shared knowledge, your personal mental dictionary is customized based on your individual experiences. What words are in my mental dictionary might overlap with the mental dictionary of someone else who also speaks the same language, but there will also be a lot of differences between the content of our dictionaries.
You add words to your mental dictionary through your educational, occupational, cultural and other life experiences. This customization also means that the size of mental dictionaries is a little bit different from person to person and varies by age. Researchers found that the average 20-year-old American English speaker knows about 42,000 unique words, and this number grows to about 48,000 by age 60. Some people will have even larger vocabularies.
By now, you might be envisioning your mental dictionary as a book with pages of words in alphabetical order you can flip through as needed. While this visual analogy is helpful, there is a lot of debate about how mental dictionaries are organized. Many scholars agree that it’s probably not like an alphabetized book.
Scientists created an interactive map of which brain areas respond to hearing different words.
One widely rejected theory, the grandmother cell theory, suggests that each concept is encoded by a single neuron. This implies that you would have a neuron for every word that you know, including “grandmother.”
While not accepted as accurate, the aspect of the grandmother cell theory suggesting that certain parts of the brain are more important for some types of information than others is likely true. For example, the left temporal lobe on the side of your brain has many regions that are important for language processing, including word retrieval and production. Rather than a single neuron responsible for processing a concept, a model called parallel distributed processing proposes that large networks of neurons across the brain work together to bring about word knowledge when they fire together.
For example, when I say the word “dog,” there are lots of different aspects of the word that your brain is retrieving, even if unconsciously. You might be thinking about what a dog smells like after being out in the rain, what a dog sounds like when it barks, or what a dog feels like when you pet it. You might be thinking about a specific dog you grew up with, or you might have a variety of emotions about dogs based on your past experiences with them. All of these different features of “dog” are processed in slightly different parts of your brain.
Using your mental dictionary
One reason why your mental dictionary can’t be like a physical dictionary is that it is dynamic and quickly accessed.
Your brain’s ability to retrieve a word is very fast. In one study, researchers mapped the time course of word retrieval among 24 college students by recording their brain activity while they named pictures. They found evidence that participants selected words within 200 milliseconds of seeing the image. After word selection, their brain continued to process information about that word, like what sounds are needed to say that chosen word and ignoring related words. This is why you can retrieve words with such speed in real-time conversations, often so quickly that you give little conscious attention to that process.
Until … you have a breakdown in word retrieval. One common failure in word retrieval is called the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon. It’s the feeling when you know what word you want to use but are unable to find it in that moment. You might even know specific details about the word you want, like other words with similar meaning or maybe the first letter or sound of that word. With enough time, the word you wanted might pop into your mind.
These tip-of-the-tongue experiences are a normal part of human language experience across the life span, and they increase as you grow older. One proposed reason for this increase is that they’re due to an age-related disruption in the ability to turn on the right sounds needed to say the selected word.
Speech-language pathologists help patients improve on their word retrieval abilities and speech.fizkes/iStock via Getty Images Plus
For some people, though, tip-of-the-tongue experiences and other speech errors can be quite impairing. This is commonly seen in aphasia, a language disorder that often occurs after injury to the language centers of the brain, such as stroke, or neurodegeneration, such as dementia. People with aphasia often have difficulty with word retrieval.
Fortunately, there are treatments available that can help someone improve their word retrieval abilities. For example, semantic feature analysis focuses on strengthening the semantic relationships between words. There are also treatments like phonomotor treatment that focus on strengthening the selection and production of speech sounds needed for word production. There are even apps that remotely provide word retrieval therapy on phones or computers.
The next time you have a conversation with someone, take a moment to reflect on why you chose the specific words you did. Remember that the words you use and the mental dictionary you have are part of what make you and your voice unique.
The Jesus Film Project is continuing on its mission to impact the nations with the Gospel message by reaching an indigenous tribe with its 2,100th translation of the Jesus Film.
The Cru ministry's popular film, based on the Book of Luke, is set to be launched next year in the Waorani language which is spoken by approximately 3,000 indigenous people of Amazonian Ecuador.
"The translation of our telling of Jesus' story into the Waorani language is notable considering the history of Christianity with the Waorani tribe. This initiative was made possible through collaboration between Jesus Film Project and a consortium of indigenous groups, along with the agreement and support of the Waorani elders," explained Chris Deckert, Jesus Film Project's Director of Language Studios.
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The Waorani tribe is the same tribe whose warriors martyred five American Christian missionaries, including Jim Elliot and Nate Saint, in 1956 for sharing the gospel.
ITEC, a ministry founded to serve the Waorani people and other people groups has been instrumental in helping Jesus Film Project connect with key leaders within the Waorani community.
Cru Ecuador will be working with ITEC and other ministries to use this new tool to bring the love of Jesus to the Waorani people.
"The ability to release the JESUS film in Waorani is the result of our incredible team's hard work and dedication. We want to ensure the accessibility of the film, not just in the world's most widely spoken languages but also in the heart language of every community. We look forward to witnessing the transformative power of this film among the Waorani people," said Josh Newell, executive director of Jesus Film Project.
To date, more than 200 million people have made decisions to know Jesus Christ after viewing the JESUS film, according to the Jesus Film Project's website. To this day, it remains the world's most translated film.
"The opportunity is great. Scripture tells us the spiritual harvest fields are ripe, and with the help of friends like you, many more unreached peoples can hear and respond to the message of hope in Christ. The time to act is now," reads a statement on their website.
Far-right Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (Republican, Georgia) was brought to book on X, formerly Twitter, after she shared the dictionary definition of a word she’d used to rant about fellow House Republicans.
After Greene had slammed as “feckless” the House Republicans who’d voted down her resolution to censure Representative Rashida Tlaib (Democrat, Michigan) ― whom she had accused of “antisemitic activity” over her anti-Israel comments ― Greene shared the definition of the term.
It was defined as “lacking initiative or strength of character.”
Merriam-Webster dictionary, meanwhile, defines the term as meaning “weak, ineffective” and “worthless, irresponsible.”
Synonyms include “ineffectual,” “ineffective” and “inefficient.”
X users suggested it was a self-own for the conspiracy theory-peddling extremist congresswoman:
Collins Dictionary has announced ‘AI’ as its Word of the Year for 2023, ahead of de-influencing, greedflation, and debanking.
BREAKING NEWS The Collins Word of the Year is… AI.
Find out more about #CollinsWOTY 2023 and see the full list here: https://ift.tt/D9iTsHZ #CollinsDictionary #AI #artificialintelligence pic.twitter.com/3HZotbGGnJ
— Collins Dictionary (@CollinsDict) November 1, 2023
Artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged as the most popular topic this year as millions interacted with ChatGPT and other popular chatbots. AI was met with excitement and expectation as users turned to chatbots for recipes, coding, script writing, analysis, making music, and more.
This didn’t last long, and fear and suspicion soon set in. Would AI take over the world in the future? Can the machines we’re investing billions in become self-aware and destroy us? Are we moving too fast with AI? These were among the hottest debate topics in 2023, justifying Collins Dictionary’s choice for its Word of the Year.
Collins defines AI as “the modelling of human mental functions by computer programs.”
AI has become a divisive topic globally. Some, like the Godfather of AI, George Hinton, have warned that we’re moving too fast with the technology. Others, like OpenAI founder Sam Altman, say we’re not moving fast enough. Regulators claim that we must rein in the technology through comprehensive policies. And yet others, like Dr. Craig Wright and
Konstantinos Sgantzos, say AI is a little overrated.
“We know that AI has been a big focus this year in the way that it has developed and has quickly become as ubiquitous and embedded in our lives as email, streaming, or any other once futuristic, now everyday technology,” commented Alex Beecroft, the managing director at Collins.
Other contenders this year included debanking and greedflation. The former refers to “the act of depriving a person of banking facilities,” while the latter is “the use of inflation as an excuse to raise prices to artificially high levels in order to increase corporate profits.”
Debanking has been made popular in the U.K. by politician Nigel Farage, who accused Coutts, a private bank and wealth manager, of shutting down his bank accounts due to his political views.
However, the digital asset industry is no stranger to debanking. Several companies, from exchanges to wallets and startups, have had their accounts shut down for dealing in digital assets.
Watch: AI takes center stage at London Chatbot Summit
New to blockchain? Check out CoinGeek’s Blockchain for Beginners section, the ultimate resource guide to learn more about blockchain technology.
