Each year the editors of dictionary.com add new words to their online dictionary as well as revise word definitions to keep up with the English language that is always evolving. In late February, the editors added 313 new words and revised 1,100 definitions of existing words. In general, lexicographers add words to the dictionary that meet these four requirements: (1) the word is used by many people; (2) the word is used by those people with a similar meaning; (3) the word is likely to have longevity; and (4) the word is useful for a wide audience. Speaking about the new word additions for 2023, senior director of editorial John Kelly elaborated in a press release, “Language is, as always, constantly changing, but the sheer range and volume of vocabulary captured in our latest update to Dictionary.com reflects a shared feeling that change today is happening faster and more than ever before. Our team of lexicographers is documenting and contextualizing that unstoppable swirl of the English language—not only to help us better understand our changing times, but how the times we live in change, in turn, our language.” Below are some of the new words added to Dictionary.com this year, broken into general topic categories:
THE MULTIVERSE
cakeage: (noun) a fee charged by a restaurant for serving a cake brought in from outside.
digital nomad: (noun) a person who works remotely while traveling for leisure, especially when having no fixed, permanent address.
nearlywed: (noun) a person who lives with another in a life partnership, sometimes engaged with no planned wedding date, sometimes with no intention of ever marrying.
hellscape: (noun) a place or time that is hopeless, unbearable, or irredeemable.
antifragile: (adjective) becoming more robust when exposed to stressors, uncertainty, or risk.
liminal space: (noun) a state or place characterized by being transitional or intermediate in some way. Informal: any location that is unsettling, uncanny, or dreamlike.
MODERN PROBLEMS
rage farming: (noun) Informal. the tactic of intentionally provoking political opponents, typically by posting inflammatory content on social media, in order to elicit angry responses and thus high engagement or widespread exposure for the original poster.
trauma dumping: (noun) unsolicited, one-sided sharing of traumatic or intensely negative experiences or emotions in an inappropriate setting or with people who are unprepared for the interaction.
pinkwashing: (noun) an instance or practice of acknowledging and promoting the civil liberties of the LGBTQ+ community, but superficially, as a ploy to divert attention from allegiances and activities that are in fact hostile to such liberties.
cyberflashing: (noun) an act or instance of sending someone unsolicited, unwanted, sexually explicit images or video using digital platforms.
IDENTITY
WOC: (abbreviation) woman of color: a woman of color; a nonwhite woman.
latine: (adjective) of or relating to people of Latin American origin or descent (used especially by Spanish speakers in place of the anglicized gender-neutral form Latinx, the masculine form Latino, or the feminine form Latina).
native language: (noun) a language that a person acquires fully through extensive exposure in childhood.
heritage language: (noun) a language used at home and spoken natively by the adults in a family, but often not fully acquired by subsequent generations whose schooling and other socialization occurs primarily in a different language, usually a dominant or official language in the surrounding society.
GENDER
sexual minority: (noun) a member or members of the LGBTQ+ community, used especially in the context of discrimination against or advocacy for a minoritized sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression.
abrosexual: (adjective) noting or relating to a person whose sexual orientation is fluid or fluctuates over time. The prefix abro- comes from the Greek habrós, meaning “graceful, delicate, pretty.”
multisexual: (adjective) noting or relating to a person who is sexually or romantically attracted to people of more than one gender, used especially as an inclusive term to describe similar, related sexual orientations such as bisexual, pansexual, omnisexual, etc.
mixed-gender: (adjective) of or relating to two or more people of different genders.
folx: (noun) people; a variant spelling of “folks” (spelled with x not only as shorthand for the /ks/ sound, but also in parallel with other gender-inclusive spellings, like Latinx).
POP CULTURE AND SLANG
petfluencer: (noun) a person who gains a large following on social media by posting entertaining images or videos of their cat, dog, or other pet.
fan service: (noun) material added to a work of fiction for the perceived or actual purpose of appealing to the audience, used especially of material that is risqué or sexual in nature.
climate fiction or cli-fi: (noun) a genre of fiction, encompassing both speculative and realist works, in which climate change and other environmental concerns are major themes. Also called cli-fi.
tifo: (noun) chiefly soccer; a coordinated display, including large banners, flags, and sometimes signs or cards, executed cooperatively or performed in unison by the most fervent supporters and ultra fans in the stadium. The term comes from Italian, in which it literally means “typhus (fever)”— leading to the figurative sense of “fevered, impassioned support.”
deadass: (adverb) Slang. genuinely, sincerely, or truly; in fact.
bedwetting: (noun) Informal. A disparaging term for exhibition of emotional overreaction, as anxiety or alarm, to events, especially major decisions or outcomes.
grundle: (noun) Slang, vulgar. the region between the anus and the genitalia; perineum.
POLITICS AND CURRENT EVENTS
self-coup: (noun) a coup d’état performed by the current, legitimate government or a duly elected head of state to retain or extend control over government, through an additional term, an extension of term, an expansion of executive power, the dismantling of other government branches, or the declaration that an election won by an opponent is illegitimate.
woke: (adjective) disparaging term of or relating to a liberal progressive orthodoxy, especially promoting inclusive policies or ideologies that welcome or embrace ethnic, racial, or sexual minorities.
cakeism: (noun) the false belief that one can enjoy the benefits of two choices that are in fact mutually exclusive, or have it both ways. The first records of the term come from 2016. It is derived from the well-known expression “to have one’s cake and eat it, too.”
ecofascism: (noun) a right-wing ideology that blames environmental harm mainly on poorer nations and on marginalized groups, such as immigrants and people of color in richer nations, and that consequently advocates remedial measures that unfairly target or even attack people who are already oppressed.
burn pit: (noun) US Military. an often expansive area, at or adjacent to a base of operations, used for the uncontrolled, open-air burning of military waste, including plastics, chemicals, rubber, paint, fuels, munitions, human and medical waste, metals, and electronics: generative of toxic smoke and fumes that have been associated with a number of short- and long-term ailments suffered by exposed military personnel and civilians.
forever chemicals: plural (noun) long-lasting chemicals, including PFAS and hydrofluorocarbons, used in the manufacture of common household items such as refrigerators, nonstick cookware, and flame-resistant furniture, that remain in the environment because they break down very slowly, and subsequently accumulate within animals and people. See also biological accumulation.
microtransaction: (noun) a relatively inexpensive payment for part of a product or for an upgraded service or experience: often at the core of an alternative sales and revenue model for businesses to maximize profit with a very large volume of piecemeal or à la carte sales, rather than a single lump sum transaction for each full product sold.
family office: (noun) a financial advisory firm for extremely wealthy private individuals that is designed to offer comprehensive management of all assets, especially one that serves a single family.
HEALTH
988: (noun) the telephone number in the U.S. for a mental health crisis hotline staffed by licensed counselors and other staff trained in suicide prevention. The 988 hotline was launched in 2022, while the 911 system dates back to 1968.
subvariant: (noun) Microbiology, Pathology. a genetically distinct form of a virus, bacteria, or other microorganism, which arises when a variant of the original strain mutates.
superdodger: (noun) Pathology. anyone who, for unverified reasons, remains uninfected or asymptomatic even after repeated exposure to a contagious virus.
naloxone: (noun) Pharmacology. an opioid antagonist, C19H21NO4, used to reverse the acute respiratory depression that occurs with opioid overdose.
microdosing: (noun) the practice of taking or administering very small amounts of a psychoactive drug, such as cannabis, LSD, or psilocybin, to improve mood or enhance cognitive functioning, without hallucinogenic or other disorienting effects.
IDENTITY
WOC: (abbreviation) woman of color: a woman of color; a nonwhite woman.
latine: (adjective) of or relating to people of Latin American origin or descent (used especially by Spanish speakers in place of the anglicized gender-neutral form Latinx, the masculine form Latino, or the feminine form Latina).
native language: (noun) a language that a person acquires fully through extensive exposure in childhood.
heritage language: (noun) a language used at home and spoken natively by the adults in a family, but often not fully acquired by subsequent generations whose schooling and other socialization occurs primarily in a different language, usually a dominant or official language in the surrounding society.
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