WORDS YOU THOUGHT DIDN'T EXIST.....!!

The much awaited latest edition of Oxford Dictionary of English (ODE) has just hit the market. It has got a lot of new stuff to please and satisfy the lovers of English language, especially those who have an irresistible thirst for the latest and the most stylish words.

Approximately 2000 new terms have entered this new edition out of which 1200 words are brand new! Let us take a glance at some of the interesting new entrants in the dictionary.

Many of you might water your mouth at the sight of various kinds of sumptuous dishes made from chicken such as chicken chilly, grilled chicken, chicken kebab and so forth. At least a few of you must have savored some of the lip-smacking dishes made out of duck and turkey as well. Of course these words, just like the dishes, are so familiar to the non-vegetarians.

But the question is, have you ever tasted ‘TURDUCKEN’? Probably not. Even as I type this word in MS Word, the spell-check feature of the software underlines it in red. The  poor software! It thinks the word must a misspelt one. Perhaps your favourite dictionaries might not have this word listed in them. But it appears in the new Oxford Dictionary of English! The word means ‘a roast dish consisting of a chicken inside a duck inside a turkey’. It is a blend of  TURkey, DUck and  chiCKEN!

Likewise, you might have been advised by someone to make your passwords alpha-numeric (consisting of or using both letters and numerals). Why? The hackers keep trying to break into your valuable personal data, emails, bank accounts etc by using a large set of words, as found in a dictionary. This kind of data theft using guessed or generated passwords has now got a term in English: ‘DICTIONARY ATTACK’, as it appears in ODE. So it is high time you reset your passwords using a combination of letters, numbers and symbols too, in place of your existing easy-to-remember password!

‘FREEMIUM’ is another newcomer in this dictionary. Guess what it means? Can’t? Well, freemium is a business model, especially on the Internet, whereby basic services are provided free of charge while more advanced features must be paid for. Your computer probably has an AVG, Avast or Norton ‘fremium’ Antivirus installed in it. Now you can boast to your computer savvy friends that you are a freemium user of this or that software when you use the software’s basic services without upgrading to the PREMIUM (paid) version! Stylish word indeed. Right?

Other such interesting words in the new edition are STAYCATION, TWEETING, CREDIT CRUNCH, MALINVESTMENT, OVERLARGED, CATASTROPHIZE, BUZZKILL, FUSSBUDGET, MATCHY-MATCHY, BEER GOGGLES, DEFRIEND and many more...

Regards

Jack (Nova English Campus)