The Marist Poll of 2012's most annoying words has come out. They claim "whatever" to be the most annoying. That may well be. There are many more annoying words than whatever in my opinion. The word I find most annoying is "chillax". I haven't any idea why but when I hear it is just cringe. I also have an extreme repulsion by the word "belly". I would much rather hear the word "whatever" any day but "chillax" is like nails on a black board and "belly" just creeps me out. Marist also listed the word "twitterverse" as an annoying word and on that I do have to agree. The thing is I don't think I have ever actually heard anyone say it so it doesn't bother me as much as it might.
Every year dictionaries do an update adding new words and one assumes removing out of date words. It is that time of year again. The Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary has come out with their partial list of this year's new words. Merriam-Webster is the country's biggest selling American dictionary. The company was founded by Noah Webster the father of American dictionaries in 1828 and after his death George and Charles Merriam secured the publishing rights. The company is now currently owned by the Encyclopedia Britannica.
The company has provided a partial list of the new words. They don't give out the full list until after publication. Apparently the dictionary business is cut throat. This year some of the new words in their publication will include: f-bomb, sexting, Mash-up and earworm.
The American lexicon is a rather complicated one and it seems to becoming more so with each passing year. What would Noah Think?
