Steve Kleinedler (@SKleinedler), executive editor of the American Heritage Dictionaries, joins Here & Now‘s Peter O’Dowd to go through some of the new words American Heritage added this year.
19 New Words In The American Heritage Dictionary
Delicious Food Terms
- gose: An unfiltered, sour wheat beer of German origin, often brewed with coriander and salt. (to appear Jan 2018)
- merguez: A spicy, North African sausage that is made with lamb or sometimes beef, is red in color and is flavored with harissa, paprika, garlic, cumin and other spices.
- saltimbocca: A tenderized cutlet of veal or chicken topped with prosciutto, sage and sometimes cheese.
- shakshuka: A North African dish of eggs poached or baked in a spicy tomato sauce.
- stromboli: A baked turnover of pizza dough rolled around a filling of cheese, meat and often vegetables. (to appear Jan 2018)
General Interest Terms
- GOAT: abbr. greatest of all time
- kettle (from birding): noun: A group of flying raptors, especially when ascending in a rising current of warm air. verb: To fly on a rising current of warm air. Used of birds.
- MacGuffin: An object in a work of fiction, especially in film, whose only purpose is to advance the plot.
- orthorexia: Excessive preoccupation with one’s dietary choices, especially with regard to the purity or healthfulness of the foods one eats.
- prepper: One who prepares for possible dangers such as natural disasters, societal collapse or nuclear war, as by stockpiling necessary supplies or acquiring survival skills.
- snowflake (new sense): A person who is considered to be overly sensitive or too easily offended, especially as a result of believing himself or herself to be unique or special.
- unicorn: (new senses) 1. Something that is greatly desired but difficult or impossible to find. 2. A startup company valued at $1 billion or more.
- upcycle: To recycle (something broken, discarded or worn out) by repurposing it to create a useful or aesthetically pleasing new product: “Using vibrant paint, I upcycled the wine bottle into a vase.” (to appear Jan 2018)
Science And Technology Terms
- burner: An inexpensive cellphone, especially one for which usage is paid in advance and which can be thrown away easily if necessary.
- dark web: An encrypted network of servers and clients that connect users to websites anonymously, making it difficult to trace users or website operators.
- deep web: The part of the World Wide Web that is not indexed by search engines and is therefore not included in search results.
- haptics: The use of the sense of touch, especially in social interactions or in interfaces between humans and computers.
- internet: First form now lowercased.
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