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.
Whoever can put a name to a different (and better) style of parenting is onto a winner. This one invokes the image of the lighthouse — guiding and leading the child to safety but not particularly hands-on, allowing the child to develop by experiencing their own initiatives and disasters.
ZG: 5
Those becoming parents are subjected to all sorts of trending advice.
Read MoreThis is a Rugby League joke. It is the game played to decide who gets the wooden spoon for the season.
ZG: 5
A popular joke but in a small community.
Read MoreThe word canon has travelled a long way. The starting point is the Ancient Greek word kanon which meant ‘a straight rod’, and then a rule or standard.
ZG: 6
The fact that this term has moved from niche online use to mainstream means that it has achieved currency.
Read MoreOne word — birthkeeper, or two — birth keeper. The term is new and has not settled down yet. The activity is birth keeping which is defined in the broadest possible way as giving support or assistance to a woman giving birth. (This implies a free birth).
Read MoreThis is a person who talks incessantly. The word seems to have greater frequency than capaholic, a pathological liar. And I guess we are more familiar with the verb to yap meaning ‘to prattle on’ than we are with to cap meaning ‘to lie’.
ZG: 6
An amusing bit of slang from the younger generation.
Read MoreWe all know the term mule in relation to drugs trafficking. This is the person who is paid to act as a drug courier. The money mule is paid to transfer money rather than drugs.
ZG: 3
A variation in trafficking jargon that has surfaced to the mainstream recently.
Read MoreNot all people with disabilities use a wheelchair. So, while wheelchair tennis, developed in 1977, has catered for those in wheelchairs, it has left the standing disabled out of the game.
ZG: 5
This is sometimes called adaptive tennis, the notion being that it is tennis adapted to the needs of disabled players.
Read MoreI am indebted to Ross Gittins for these new acronyms which he explained in his article about how the right has moved to the left and vice-versa in voting patterns in America and, he expects, in Australia. GAL stands for green, alternative and libertarian.
Read MoreOne of the major obstacles to the smooth integration of coal-fired power stations and renewable energy supplies has been the inability to turn off the power station as there is a surge in the supply of renewables in the middle of the day.
ZG: 6
This is part of the jargon of the transition from coal to renewables but a process that will become more familiar we hope.
Read MoreThe latest of the various influencers to hold sway on TikTok is the cleanfluencer. You can watch one in action in their own home, demonstrating the best way to declutter, to organise, to clean. They can achieve a level of cleanliness that most of us cannot aspire to.
ZG: 6
While cleanfluencers can have big and enthusiastic followings, it still only amounts to a small group of mostly women obsessed with cleanliness.
Read MoreWhile reggae has been popular in Australia since the early1980s, it has taken a new direction in more recent times to produce the genre desert reggae. Indigenous singers of Central Australia have found that this is an appropriate vehicle for their voices, their culture.
ZG: 6
For the reggae lovers this is something different.
Read MoreThink wholesome, natural, effortless beauty with no artifice or ostentation and you have the clean girl aesthetic. Of course this can only be achieved with a certain amount of help from cosmetics.
ZG: 7
With the younger generation this term has high frequency. The rest of us are learning to recognise and understand it.
Read MoreThis is a new (well — comparatively new) genre of music in which contemporary popular music is arranged in a medieval style.
Read MoreWe don’t often take an interest in new Covid variants these days but XEC has registered, at least with the medical fraternity. It is a hybrid of two previously existing Omicron sub variants, one of which is a FLiRT and one of which is a FLuQe (see previous new words).
ZG: 4
We have mostly ceased to care about new variants and strange names bestowed on them by the WHO.
Read MoreEssentially this means something that has both biological and non-biological components. There are two standout areas in which biohybrid materials are advancing — medicine and robotics.
Read MoreBodybuilders compete on the strength and beauty of their bodies. Someone who outclasses everyone else is a MOG (Man Of God).
ZG: 6
An obscure piece of jargon from the world of bodybuilding which has entered federal parliament.
Read MoreThe medical staff in Blackpool, UK, had a name for what they saw as the result not just of an individual’s poor health but of a social condition linked to poverty and deprivation that meant that the health of the community suffered. It was shit life syndrome.
Read MoreAlternative names are crappification or platform decay. The process is that a new service or product pops up online aiming to please and attract as many users as possible but ultimately disregards both the users and the business customers in favour of maximising profit.
ZG: 5
I think this is a term that is making its way into the mainstream, since most people sadly recognise the process.
Read MoreThis comes from a machinima web series in which there is a war between the skibidi toilets (toilets with a human head emerging from them) and humanoid figures with cameras, speakers and televisions for heads. Yes, it’s weird. But popular.
Read MoreTikTok video creator Jools Lebron has managed to give the word demure a new twist — and has persuaded her followers to send in examples of what is demure these days. Jools says that it now means that you are mindful, cutesy, not doing too much.
Read More
