In search of a few good words
It's easy to get hung up on words if putting them together sensibly is what you do for a living.
Newspaper people live and breathe "The Associated Press Stylebook," the bible that dictates all the nitpicky things we should and shouldn't do with the English language. It tells us that short-lived is hyphenated but shortsighted is one word. Troublemaker is one word, but trouble shoot is two words, unless you're a trouble-shooter or trouble-shooting; both of those are hyphenated.
You get the idea. We've had arguments in staff meetings about whether we should use the word partner as a verb. Editors pooh-pooh it, even though the latest edition of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary says that yes, partner can be used as a verb.
Sometimes words simply sound funny if they're used as verbs. A co-worker listening to a recent radio interview heard a guy say he was "dialoguing" with his kids. I looked up the word and it can indeed by used as a verb, but it's still an unusual synonym for talking.
These are the types of details that consume our days. We know not to use cliches. Phrases such as "win-win situation" and "thinking outside the box" will be duly edited out of our stories. Government slang is also a no-no; terms such as facilitate and implement are flat-out forbidden but sometimes slip by an editor's eagle eyes.
One of our past copy editors was such a style zealot she read the annually updated stylebook cover to cover and memorized it.
That much of a style hound I'm not.
What's more intriguing to me is how words develop and become part of our everyday vocabulary.
Words such as bikini, cheeseburger and jet plane haven't been around forever. They were added to the dictionary in the 1940s. The 1950s brought us beatnik, Bermuda shorts, doublespeak and hash browns.
A decade later, hippie, doofus, peacenik and cable television found their way into the dictionary. The 70s gave us trail mix, video game, X-rated, gas-guzzler and space cadet, while the 80s acknowledged compact disc, designer drug, mall rat and Twelve Step as documentable terms.
By the 1990s American dictionaries had incorporated other trendy words such as bad hair day, buffalo wing, carjacking, scrunchy, superchurch and Web site.
Enter the new millennium.
Pleather, a plastic fabric made to look like leather, was one of last year's official new words, as was teensploitation, the exploitation of teenagers by producers of teen-oriented films.
Technology has been good for a lot of new words - digital subscriber line, nanotech, petabyte and exabyte.
The 2000s have given us gaydar, the ability to recognize that another person is gay, and keypal, an e-mail pen pal.
Way is an old word with a new meaning, as in really, very - "way cool." And don't forget hottie, a physically attractive person.
Merriam-Webster did an online survey of favorite words not yet in the dictionary. Ginormous (bigger than gigantic and bigger than enormous) topped the list, followed by confuzzled, an adjective for being confused and puzzled at the same time, and woot, an exclamation of joy or excitement.
Other favorites were chillax, or hanging out with friends, and phonecrastinate, to put off answering the phone until caller ID displays the incoming name and number.
Other comical submissions included fahoodled (confused), craughed (to cry and laugh simultaneously), awesometastic (super wonderful) and chizzy (awesome, super). Who knows how soon Merriam-Webster will embrace these gems as our language continues to evolve.
For today, I plan to phonecrastinate, chillax and spend some time dialoguing with my family.
Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by e-mail at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com