Defining the times

Technology and its lingo opening new chapters in dictionary updates

October 16, 2000
Web posted at: 2:04 PM EDT (1804 GMT)

In this story: Internet culture spawns new additions Maintaining a careful balance LESSON PLAN RELATED STORIES

From staff and wire reports

It's a whole new world of words, thanks largely to the increasing role technology -- and the language that goes with it -- plays in modern culture. And the world's dictionary makers are straining to keep up.

The powers that be in dictionaries do not only have to tune in to the lingo of "screenagers" (defined in the new Oxford Compact English dictionary as Internet or computer-addicted teenagers) but countless other developments in technology, fashion and pop culture.

VIDEO CNN's Garrick Utley looks at how new words go legit in the dictionary Play video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media)    QUIZ How well do you know your English?   Background These are among the new terms in the new American Heritage Dictionary: buyback dark matter digerati dot-com face time family leave Bill Gates homeschool poetry slam wannabe xenotransplant

The challenge for those updating today's dictionaries is two-fold: unearthing fresh, new words and predicting what terms will pass the test of time.

"A lot of new words that come up are fizzlers," said Joseph Pickett, executive editor of the new American Heritage Dictionary, which recently added 10,000 terms since its last update in 1995. "They evaporate after a couple of months.

"So usually we're skeptical, and we like it to develop a track record of usage before we put it in because we don't want to load the book up with a lot of junk."

"Dot-com" is one of the new words in American Heritage's latest edition but just barely.

' "Dot-com' seems like a very widely used word now, and everybody likes it," Pickett said. "It's always in the newspapers. But about a year and a half ago, 'dot-com' was just sort of coming on.

The new American Heritage Dictionary boasts color pictures, usage notes, charts and histories to break up the lists of definitions on every page

"It was actually one of the last words we entered into our database," Pickett admits. "It was one of those words that our editor who handles computer-science stuff said, 'Hey, we should probably put this in. It looks like it's going to be a big word.' "

The editor was right. But the American Heritage editors' cautious approach to new words seems commendable, particularly in an age when new words, phrases and numbers/letters -- B2B, anyone? -- spring from the mouths of overzealous Net-heads in conference rooms across America.

Only 67 new terms made it into the recently released Oxford Compact English dictionary, which was updated for the first time since 1996. Not surprisingly, the growing Internet culture spawned many of the additions.

In addition to dot-com (defined as a company that conducts business on the Internet) and screenagers, the 2000 Oxford Compact English dictionary also contains the terms cybersquatting (registering Web names in the hope of selling them) and flexecutive (worker whose hours and place of work are flexible due to the new technology).

Technology shaped the new American Heritage Dictionary in more ways than one. For the third edition, the editors were still working on file cards that were stored in (real) file cabinets. For the latest edition, they converted their list of words to a database accessible over the computer network. E-mail also played an important role in debating the merits, usage and pronunciation of words, old and new.

"Technology really influenced the way we worked in this product," Pickett admitted.

Maintaining the balance between fresh and long-lasting is also a challenge in another large forum for new words: fashion.

With an eye perhaps to lookists (those who discriminate on the grounds of how a person looks), the Oxford Compact English dictionary added these wardrobe-related terms -- chuddies (underpants), carpenters (multipocketed trousers with loops for tools) and shrug (a close-fitting cardigan).

The fashion catwalks account for 10 of this edition's 67 additional terms, including superwaif (thin model), notch-neck (blouse) and bindhi (sticker jewelry).

The Oxford dictionary was updated by researchers who watch TV, scan newspapers and magazines as well as monitor the Internet to find out which words are used most. Only words still in common use at the time of publication -- four years later -- were included in the latest edition.

Most of the updates to today's dictionaries, however, are geared toward the "digerati" -- defined in American Heritage as people who are knowledgeable about digital technology such as computer programming and design.

CNN.com Senior Writer Jamie Allen and Reuters contributed to this report.

A book for those who are not screenagers
August 13, 2000
Brave new words
July 3, 2000
New words for a 'New World': An updated dictionary
October 11, 1999

Oxford English Dictionary
American Heritage Dictionary
Merriam-Webster OnLine