Dictionary.com has unveiled its fall word drop, which consists of 566 new entries. Alongside ‘nepo baby’ and ‘jawn’, ‘shower orange,’ ‘greenwashing,’ ‘unsend’ and ‘generative AI’ have all landed in the archive.
“The words don’t stop coming, so we’re updating the dictionary more frequently than ever… and just with any words: this update includes an incredibly useful concentration of terms for naming the complexities of modern life,” Dictionary.com shared in a post on X. “We can’t endorse any words, but we can document their use in the real world.”
On the official website, Dictionary.com lists four main inspirations for this season’s additions:
- Complicated technical jargon that artificial intelligence has catapulted into our awareness
- Intriguing loanwords from languages around the world
- Fun insta-adds to your vocabulary for things you didn’t know there were words for
- And a ton of other lexical jawns!
On the pop culture/slang front, a handful of relevant vernacular is now searchable on Dictionary.com. While ‘nepo baby’ (defined as a celebrity with a parent who is also famous, especially one whose industry connections are perceived as essential to their success) and ‘jawn’ (defined as “something or someone for which the speaker does not know or does not need a specific name” and prefaced with “Informal. Chiefly Philadelphia”) are the standouts, the platform also added ‘Blursday’ (“a day not easily distinguished from other days, or the phenomenon of days running together”) and ‘NIL’ (“aspects of a collegiate athlete’s identity for which they may earn money from a third party…”). If you were unaware, a ‘shower orange’ is “an orange that is peeled and eaten under a steamy shower, the purported benefit being that the steam enhances the orange’s citrusy fragrance and creates a soothing experience for the person who is showering.”
Health and wellness concepts such as ‘intermittent fasting’ and ‘stress eating’ also now boast official definitions – as well as ‘coffee nap’ (” short nap, usually 15-30 minutes, taken immediately after drinking a cup of coffee”) and ‘sleep debt’ (“the difference between the amount of sleep a person needs and the actual amount of time spent sleeping, when the amount needed exceeds the time slept.”)
Dictionary.com also taps into the evolving realm of relationships in this fall’s new entries. ‘Polysexual,’ ‘polyromantic,’ ‘autosexual’ and ‘autoromantic’ all make appearances, among a run of other terms related to identity and sexuality.
Under what Dictionary.com calls the “Modern Problems” sector, additions include ‘greenwashing,’ ‘sportswashing’ (“an instance or practice of rehabilitating the bad reputation of a person, company, nation, etc., or mitigating negative press coverage with a sports event, or an appeal to unify and reconcile groups in conflict by celebrating fans’ shared love of a game”), and ‘crypto-fascism.’ A bunch of climate-centric terms landed on the site as well, including ‘climate criminal’ – “a person, business, country, or other entity whose actions or activities are considered particularly destructive to the environment.”
Artificial Intelligence gets its own section, which sees the inclusion of ‘generative AI’ (“artificial intelligence that is designed to process prompts from users and respond with text, images, audio, or other output that is modeled on a training data set”), ‘chatbot’ (“a computer program designed to respond with conversational or informational replies to verbal or written messages from users”) and ‘GPT’ (“generative pre-trained transformer: a type of machine learning algorithm that uses deep learning and a large database of training text in order to generate new text in response to a user’s prompt”). As for science and technology? ‘Algo’ is now officially defined as an “algorithm.”
Other fun additions? ‘Unsee’ joins the archive alongside ‘unsend’, and ‘snite’ – “verb. British. to wipe mucus from (the nose), especially with the finger or thumb.” See the full list of new entries – as well as new and revised definitions – at Dictionary.com
In other news, Google has shared the first quick look at the forthcoming Pixel 8 Smartphone.
