Are you really annoyed by your helicopter parents?
I’m sure you don’t like to be a boomerang child, do you?
Don’t you think robocalls must be banned by the government?
Well, these are a few out of more than 150 words which
secured their place in many of the famous dictionaries such as Merriam-Webster's
Collegiate® Dictionary, Oxford dictionaries Online etc in 2011.
The term
‘helicopter parent’ refers to a parent who closely observes whatever their
child does such as what they watch/read, who they talk to, where they go, who
they befriend etc.
You probably know a
young person who moves away from his family in search of a job or to start a
business and so on in order to be independent and to earn money. However, he or
she comes back to their family after a certain period of time to live with them
because all their attempts to be successful failed. Such a person is called a
‘boomerang child’
And what about a 'robocall'? Though you may not know the meaning of this term, I am sure many of
you often get such calls. Yes, a ‘robocall’ is a pesky call that you receive on
your (cell) phone from telemarketing companies that want to promote their
business. Such calls are mostly automated, hence the term ‘robocall’.
Some other
interesting popular words of 2011 include bromance (a close but nonsexual
friendship between two men), cougar (a middle-aged woman
seeking a romantic relationship with a younger man), fist bump (a gesture made famous by President
Obama in which two people lightly tap each other’s fists), m-commerce (a
business transaction conducted using a mobile electronic device) and so on.
