New Words 2021

The year has barely begun and already the new words are rolling in. So it is some satisfaction to package up last year’s collection into an ebook called New Words 2022: Changes in Australian English.  You can read about it here under Books.

As I turn towards another year of collecting I pause to wonder why I do it.  Partly it is because, after so many years of working on the dictionary, I can’t help myself.  I notice new words and want to work them out.  Some of them I love. Porch pirate and locktails were pleasing additions.  Strollout produced a wry smile.  The names for the variants drawn from the Greek alphabet caused a bit of discussion.  When we reach Omega, how are we going to say it? o-mee-ga, o-may-ga, or o-muh-ga?

Mostly I think the reason is that although these words are part of our everyday life now, in ten years time we will view them differently.  Ten years is a very short time to give us distance from the words we use but it is enough.  A couple of centuries is better, but give it time.  Collecting the new words gives us the chance to look back on ourselves then and see who we were and how we lived. Our new words are the record of what mattered to us, what was different in our world that needed to be named, and what our view of that world was in our attempts at word play and humour.

So I will continue to happily collect and identify and explain. For some people it is owl figurines, for others it is teapots.  My obsession is words and it has kept me very happy for a long while.

It is impossible to speculate what the prize items might be this year, but I hope that there is less of the COVID-related words than there was last year. We will see.