For some people, getting a nocebo is as scary as getting a smackdown.
And while some eagerly await a perfect storm, others shun gray literature.
Well, for better or worse, 10 years ago you couldn’t have found a definition for nocebo, smackdown, perfect storm or gray literature. But now, my dears, it’s a new day.
Merriam-Webster has added several new words to the 11th edition of its Collegiate Dictionary, taking iconoclastic language out of the realm of slang and into the world of accepted speech.
Some additions, such as flex-cuff and Bollywood, make sense – one is a plastic tool used by, among others, law enforcement in place of handcuffs; the other is a spicy wood from the land of Bolly.
All right, I’m just messing with you. Of course, Bollywood describes the movie-making industry in India.
Speed dating, another new entry, is one I’d rather didn’t exist. “Speed dating.” What’s the hurry? Used to be that dating was a good thing. A girl could pad her bra, add extensions to her hair and have time to dazzle a man with her fake parts before he got to know the real her. Good times … goooooood times.
Now, as if modern woman hasn’t given up enough, the simple, delicious ritual of a first date has been molten into a tasteless microwaveable side item – no longer the main course of the evening but simply a la carte. Ladies, really, if you can’t get the man to slow down long enough to get a decent date out of him, I’d hate to think what he’ll be rushing his way through later.
Perhaps I’m making a ginormous mistake, dissin’ the swift. Ginormous, by the way, is probably my favorite new addition to the dictionary.
Ginormous. That was the kind of word that got tossed around late at night, way back when I worked on the sports copy desk. The touchdown, putt, kick or dunk wasn’t big, or grand, or even enormous – it was ginormous. Sigh! I do miss hanging with the boys.
But the most amazing addition to Webster’s is more outrageous than ginormous, more modern than speed dating and more ridiculous than gray literature. Hold onto your grills – that’s gold fronts on your teeth – because the word of the day, boys and girls, is crunk.
Yeah!
Popularized by an Atlanta-based rapper who immortalized the shout, “Yeah!” in a number of songs and performances, crunk, say the folks at Webster’s, is “a style of Southern rap music featuring repetitive chants and rapid dance rhythms.”
Ah, the King’s English should be honored to have such an utterance chosen to stand among such treasures as obsequious and ubiquitous; pantheon and Parthenon. Could there be a Latin root for “crunk?” Perhaps somewhere in ancient Egypt a cave wall holds the secrets to an ancient hip-hop tomb.
OK, it’s time for me to take Webster’s to school. Even though they have crunk classified as a noun to describe a type of music, Lil Jon and his many followers are people of action. And people of action like verbs.
No one merely listens to crunk. Try it and you’ll get laughed out of the party, my friends. You have to “get crunked.” And sometimes you might be so full of the music, you might just “be crunk.”
Can fo shizzle be far behind? Thank you Webster’s for adding spelling words to our lives and diluting the language even further.
Sherri Winston can be reached at or 954-356-4108.
