Big Dictionary is out of control

Merriam-Webster adds new words without cutting lingo that didn’t take

Was that thirst trap bussin’ or cromulent? Chef ’s kiss to the grammable edgelord?

Don’t know what that means? Me neither. But italicized above are just a few of the 690 new words the sadistic logophiles at MerriamWebster added to the dictionary this week.

Now, I may be a padawan who lacks rizz and has yet to rotoscope a nurdle. I may have no beast mode for tabata. I may just be a doggo who longs to rewild amid the nyctinasty.

Here’s what I do know: Big Dictionary is totally out of control.

What is the business model at these word conglomerates? Do staffers pocket a sly commission if they can convince their linguist overlords to add a smishing or finsta

to the already overloaded pages? Are there boardroom meetings about zhuzh? Are there heated debates if bracketology works better as a noun or adjective?

Merriam-Webster added 690 new words THIS WEEK. Our earliest ancestors needed hundreds of years to come up with like four. Me hungry. Run! Hyena! A decade ago, the Economist published a list of “Lexical Facts.” Research found most English-speaking adults had a vocabulary in the range of 20,000 to 35,000 words. Most adults learn one new word a day until middle age. Then vocabulary growth basically flatlines.

You know why grandpa sounds out of touch? He hasn’t learned a new word since 1986.

If you study language acquisition and semantic inertia, you will be tempted to give these MerriamWebster peeps a jump scare. Knock it off, already. There are too many words. Throw in internet slang, text acronyms, emojis, incomprehensible memes and it’s amazing we all don’t hide out under the basement stairs staring mutely at cobwebs.

Here’s an idea: Instead of adding new words, maybe it’s time to get rid of some?

Big Dictionary is running a racket. They just keep adding new words without deleting the previous new words they added that never caught on. Here are a few added to the dictionary this century: abandonware, sponcon, hogsbane, copypasta, thermobaric.

Exactly. If you heard someone use one of those in 2023, you’d suspect a brain injury.

Instead of just adding, MerriamWebster should also be killing. That’s how you achieve dictionary equilibrium. At some point, you need to shut off the hose if you’re filling Mr. Turtle Pool or the tots will slip and fall in the grass.

You’re adding stagiaire this week? Fine. Get rid of bumfuzzle. Adding jorts to the fashion ledger? Get rid of wifebeater. It’s problematic. Why do we need crate-dig when we already have antiquing? Why do we need quiet quit and rage quit?

People, it’s all quitting! Scanning the 690 new entries, I did get a chuckle from “TTYL.” My daughter once texted me that at the end of a short chat and I had no clue it meant “Talk To You Later.”

To my addled, middle-aged brain, it might as well have been “Take Tylenol You Loser.”

“UAP” was also added this week, as in “unidentified aerial phenomenon.” Nice try, Merriam-Webster. Now I know you are a corrupt organ of black program disinfo. UAP, which governments are now trying to use to supplant UFO, is part of a pernicious master plan that ultimately involves stopping “disclosure” dead in its antigravity tracks.

Don’t know what that means? Me neither. But the aliens do.

Merriam-Webster adding 690 words this week is, to quote another new word, GOATED. September is usually pre-season for Big Dictionary. It’s December when these dorks go wild in advance of Words of the Year. All I’m saying is it’s just too much. Another new word added this week is cheffy, defined as “characteristic of or befitting a professional chef (as in showiness, complexity or exoticness).”

This is a slippery slope, MerriamWebster. Once you fuse adjectives and vocations with a redundant double-consonant, you are opening a Pandorry Box: “Man, that driver was so Uberry. Oh, no. The chute did not open! That was so not skydiverry. I just had the best pumpkin spice latte from the baristaerry at Starbuckserry.”

Big Dictionary needs to start surveying English speakers across the free world so we can help take a flame-thrower to this accumulated mess of cluttered entries. I’ve never used floccinaucinihilipilification.

Go ahead and scrap that one to make room for smashburger.

While announcing this week’s new words, the dictionary observed: “Signs of a healthy language include words being created, words being borrowed from other languages and new meanings being given to existing words.”

Maybe that’s why hallucination and boss are getting repurposed?

What Merriam-Webster failed to mention is they now see our beautiful language as the universe itself, forever expanding and never, ever in need of a cosmic cull.

A black hole to suck up the forgotten detritus.

Their 2007 Word of the Year was “w00t.” A runner-up was pecksniffian. Last year’s top words included loamy. As in: “When Ron DeSantis struggles to simulate a human smile during a televised debate, I get a real bad loamy feeling in my Underoos.”

We have too many words right now. They are often used incorrectly and botched verbally. Just listen to podcasts. If I hear one more fasttalking host mispronounce “comparable,” I’m going to rage quit all earthly communications.

When a dictionary adds ngl, I’m not gonna lie, that is seriously kayfabe.