Monday, August 23, 2010

Viral Vocab

You've surely noticed how the English language has been changing rapidly with new words coming into use on a regular basis, mainly since the internet revolution. Well apparently, there is an Oxford Dictionary of English (as opposed to the more conventional Oxford English Dictionary) that allows the inclusion of these newly made up words. Here are a few examples:

chill pill a notional pill taken to make someone calm down
chillax calm down and relax
turducken a roast dish consisting of a chicken inside a duck inside a turkey
staycation holiday spent in one's home country
buzzkill a person or thing that has a depressing or dispiriting effect
automagically automatically and in a way that seems ingenious, inexplicable, or magical
exit strategy a pre-planned means of extricating oneself from a situation
overthink think about (something) too much or for too long
matchy-matchy excessively colour-coordinated
LBD little black dress
frenemy a person with whom one is friendly despite a fundamental dislike or rivalry
cheeseball lacking taste, style, or originality
hikikomori the abnormal avoidance of social contact, typically by adolescent males (in Japan)

They say the only way to remember new words is to use them in a sentence. Since we have so many new words here, I'm going to need an entire paragraph to fit them all in. Now, to begin:

I am totally overthinking this. Is it that difficult to find accessories for my LBD so that I don't end up being all matchy-matchy at the party tonight? The last thing I want is for someone to think I am a cheeseball. Quite apart from that being an insult, it reminds me of the lunch my LKG benchmate used to bring to school, the eating of which was followed by her wiping her cheesebally (yes, this will be my contribution to the ODE) fingers on my sleeve. Yuck! She was definitely the first frenemy I had. I wish there was a way to automagically erase all but the most pleasant childhood memories. Sigh. I need to take a chill pill, chillax and think of an exit strategy in case I get stuck with some buzzkill this evening who can't stop praising the turducken on the buffet table, which would make it impossible to eat a dish I might have tried had I not heard the name and mentally shortened it to... (I will leave that to your imagination). And who knows? I might even come across a more accomplished hikikomori than myself, although if (s)he were that good, (s)he'd be at home, enjoying a staycation instead of planning an exit strategy for a non-existent social event.

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