New words — Sue Butler — Lexicographer at large

Lexicographer at large

New Words

These are new words or phrases that have caught my eye. My definition of a new word is one which is not in the Macquarie Dictionary online.

Some words seem to have more significance than others in terms of reflecting changes in the Australian culture, so I will give each word a Zeitgeist rating (ZG) within a range of 1-10.

If you disagree with the rating that I give, please argue your case in the comment field provided.

I would love you to contact me if you have made any new word discoveries of your own.

prompt engineering

prompt engineering

In all the discussions about chatbots recently people jumped lightly over the requirement to build a set of texts and instructions that the chatbot can use to decide what to write and how to write, content and style. This is now referred to as prompt engineering, that is, designing what will prompt the chatbot to produce good output.

ZG: 4

The flurry of excitement aroused by chatbots seems to have died down, but we can probably expect to hear more about prompt engineering as a career for the future.

Sue ButlerApril 17, 2023Comment

blockchain wedding

blockchain wedding

This is a wedding in the metaverse. The couple sit down, each with their laptop, as their avatars enter the wedding venue and talk to the marriage celebrant. They exchange NFT rings and receive an NVT certificate. The certificate is not legally binding.

ZG: 3

This is very much a novelty embraced by a small minority.

InternetSue ButlerApril 17, 2023Comment

quit lit

quit lit

It began with chick lit in the late 1980s, the jokey name for the romantic fiction that women liked to read. Now we have quit lit which is the genre of writing that focuses on the sober-serious (blogged here last year) and the techniques and practices that allowed them to become so.

ZG: 5

The fashions in writing genres do not touch us all, particularly when it involves doing without alcohol.

Arts LItSue ButlerApril 17, 2023Comment

yes, and

yes, and

There is a mode of improvisation in which you agree with what one player has offered and then expand on it. ‘My hair is on fire’ says one actor. Yes, and it’s catching onto your clothes’ says another, building up the scene and giving the first actor something to work with.

ZG: 5

The leap from the theatre to business contexts has given this expression greater currency.

Business, Arts LItSue ButlerApril 3, 2023 Comment

password child

password child

There are many ways in which parents are deemed to have failed their children and sown the seeds of continuing hurt, feelings of worthlessness and lifelong anger. The latest one springs from the way in which we create passwords online, using the names of our dogs, our cats, and … our children.

ZG: 7

SocietySue ButlerMarch 27, 2023Comment

desk bombing

desk bombing

SocietySue ButlerMarch 20, 2023Comment

gold doping

gold doping

The Perth Mint has been in the headlines, accused of money laundering and of gold doping. The second charge needed explanation.

ZG: 3

This is jargon and not something the average person would encounter but it is fascinating.

BusinessSue ButlerMarch 13, 2023Comment

beach spreading

beach spreading

Beach spreading refers to the habit of claiming territory on a beach, usually by putting up a large cabana with accessories for the day out such as tables and eskis that take up more space than the average family would have taken in the days when we just spread out some towels.

ZG: 8

There seems to be a Down-with-the cabanas! rebellion stirring among beachgoers in Sydney.

SocietySue ButlerMarch 13, 2023Comment

depression room

depression room

A room that is a total mess — clothes everywhere, bed unmade, last night’s dinner still on the floor — is an indicator that the inhabitant of the room is suffering severe depression.

ZG: 6

Many more people than usual experienced a depression room during COVID so the awareness of the depression room and how to climb out of it is greater.

Environment, MedicineSue ButlerMarch 13, 2023Comment

postbiotic

postbiotic

First we had antibiotics. Then in the 1950s we learned about probiotics (the opposite of antibiotics) which encouraged certain microorganisms in the gut. We also had prebiotics which were foods that were not digested in the gut but which work in conjunction with the probiotics.Now we are focusing our attention on the postbiotics which are the molecules produced after the prebiotics and probiotics have done their work.

ZG: 5

We are all concerned with our inner health and anxious to take the latest thing.

MedicineSue ButlerMarch 13, 2023Comment

trickle charger

trickle charger

It won’t be long before we are all familiar with the details of an EV but they are still novel at the moment — at least to me. The trickle charger is the slowest way of charging the battery in your EV.

ZG: 6

We are at the early stages of learning the jargon of EVs but it is coming.

EnvironmentSue ButlerMarch 13, 2023 Comment

price-wage spiral

price-wage spiral

For some time now the Governor of the Reserve Bank, Philip Lowe, has in his public remarks stressed that a wage-price spiral (where wages go up and prices go up as employers pass the increases on) would keep inflation high. But now he has commented that what we need to look out for is a price-wage spiral (where prices go up and employees seek better wages to cover the increased cost in living).

ZG: 5

This is a subtlety of economics that has escaped most people who are busy trying to survive the consequences.

ZG: 4

This is possibly a Philip Lowe coinage that will not take off in the general community because it does not get at the heart of the problem.

Economics, PoliticsSue ButlerMarch 13, 2023Comment

romantasy

romantasy

Mills and Boon-style romance has always been a big seller but fantasy seems to dominate everything at the moment. So why not combine the two and have romance fantasy, otherwise known as romantasy.

ZG: 4

No doubt romantasy fills a large shelf in the bookshop but it is still a subgenre.

Arts LItSue ButlerMarch 13, 2023Comment

ACCU

ACCU

In the current discussions carbon abatement is the purchasing of Australian Carbon Credit Units to offset the production of greenhouse gases in a planned project. One ACCU represents the avoidance or removal of one tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2-e).

ZG: 5

There will be increasing analysis of who gets ACCUs and on what basis.

EnvironmentSue ButlerMarch 13, 2023Comment

methane bomb

methane bomb

This is the sudden release of a massive amount of methane gas, mostly as a leak from an oil or gas project. The companies responsible for the methane bombs are called super-emitters and their emissions were mapped last year in NASA’s Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation (EMIT).

ZG: 5

Now that NASA is mapping these, and given the huge addition to greenhouse gases that they make, we can expect more discussion about them.

EnvironmentSue ButlerMarch 13, 2023Comment

letting it rot

In June last year I blogged on the Chinese phenomenon of the lying flat movement, the increased trend with young people to opt out of the competitive rat race. Well, things have gone from bad to worse. Lying flat has progressed to letting it rot.

ZG: 2

Not many of us pay attention to popular culture movements in China, more’s the pity.

SocietySue ButlerMarch 5, 2023Comment

run philosophy

run philosophy

Some citizens of China, particularly in the middle class, are viewing their future in China with dismay. No prospects and no freedom. For one reason or another, some people are searching for ways of getting out of the country. This is evident in the surge of online discussions about how to achieve such an exit, a trend described as runxue.

ZG: 1

Another interesting item from China, entering into international English.

SocietySue ButlerMarch 5, 2023Comment

obesogen

obesogen

Obesogen is a backformation from obesogenic, a relatively recent word meaning ‘tending to cause obesity’. In the 1980s this was an adjective mostly applied to diets and unhealthy living styles. The obesogen is the name given to a chemical that promotes weight gain by increasing the activity of cells that store fat or, alternatively, inhibiting their ability to release that store as energy.

ZG: 9

This is a rather depressing view of the world we have created that is now making us obese.

MedicineSue ButlerMarch 5, 2023Comment

touch grass

touch grass

This phrase comes from the netiverse and was originally directed at people who were thought to have spent too much time online (and it was showing). They were therefore advised to go outside into the real world and touch some grass to reconnect.

ZG: 6

For those of us engaged in chat online or in the Twitterverse, this is an accepted expression.

Colloquial, InternetSue ButlerFebruary 27, 2023 Comment

polycrisis

polycrisis

First we had the permacrisis which Collins Dictionary listed as a Word of the Year for 2022 and defined as ‘an extended period of instability and insecurity’. Now we have the polycrisis, a term popularised by the Columbia University historian Adam Tooze who argues that the individual shocks involved in a polycrisis interact so that the whole is more than the sum of its parts.

Economics, PoliticsSue ButlerFebruary 27, 2023Comment