Many
of these new words are slang and will probably sound old-fashioned in
a few years. The one I've heard the most is “cray cray” (a
shortening of crazy crazy), meaning really crazy. Another popular
word is “soof”, an acronym for “Swear On Our Friendship” that
is used to emphasize the speaker is telling the truth. “Salty” is
a now used to describe someone who is bad-tempered or annoying.
I
also hear young people calling their friends “fam” (short for
family) instead of the well-known “bro” (short for brother.)
Many
words were popularized by the media. The Oxford Dictionary chose
“selfie”—a self portrait usually taken with a cell-phone
camera—as their word of the year. Even Obama and Pople Francis were
seen taking selfies. It beat out “twerk”, the sexy dance move
where you squat and thrust you bottom up and down, made famous by
Miley Cyrus at the MTV Awards.
Several
new words this year were portmanteaus (combining two words into one
new word.) The big tech trend for 2014 is predicted to be oversized
smartphones or “phablets”—phone
+ tablet.
Another new portmanteau is “glamping” (glamour
+ camping),
which is camping with more comfortable accommodation and facilities.
Some new
words have been created using traditional suffixes (letters added to
the end of a word to create a new word.) “Bigorexia” is the
obsession to become more muscular. And “nomophobia” was created
from no-mobile-phone
phobia
to describe when a person is afraid of being out of cell phone
contact. We can also use the related adjective “nomophobic” and
the noun for a person with the condition, “nomophobe”.
Some
“new” words are actually old words with a new meaning. “Fade-out”
has traditionally meant the technique in film where an image or sound
gradually disappears; today it can also mean when lovers or friends
slowly stop meeting and communicating with each other. And “sketchy”
has come to mean strange, suspicious, dangerous, or illegal in
addition to its traditional meaning of lacking details.
The
English language has a long history changing nouns into verbs (just
read Shakespeare), and this has created new words such as
“showrooming”—the practice of looking for a product in a shop
before buying it on-line—and “astroturfing”—hiding an
organized political or corporate campaign as a popular movement.
There
were a couple of words for money that became popular in 2013.
“Bitcoin” is a purely virtual currency, but now some stores
accept bitcoins for purchases and there are even bitcoin ATMs. A word
that's more likely slang is “guap”, used to mean a lot of money.
Listen
for these words in 2014; I'm sure you'll be hearing them more and
more.
