Word Presents

The new words are here! The new words are here!

It’s like nerd Christmas, except I don’t get a weird reindeer sweater from Aunt Sadie.

That’s right, OED (That’s the Oxford English Dictionary for you heathens. What? You don’t know what a heathen is? Check the OED. It’s there.) has announced its new words for 2013!  For word geeks, the OED is the constitution. If a word doesn’t appear in the OED it’s not really a word. The OED holds more power than the Scrabble dictionary and Richard Scary’s Picture Dictionary, combined! You don’t know words, if you don’t know the OED.

So it’s a big deal when every year the OED picks a word to add to it’s folds.  Jumbled letters are validated as real words! It’s like Pinocchio touching his real boy self for the first time.

“Wait! That’s still wood!”

Oh, or maybe the second time.  Either way.  It’s that way.

OED means words become real.  We could not have LOLed or OMGed without the OED. Those letter combinations became words last year along with muffin-top and tinfoil-hat.  The last words were only paired words until OED legitimized them with a hyphen.

So this year is a new present to open. This year there are two words, one for the American version, and one for the ATP (across the pond) English version. What are those words?  Well, lets pull back the wrapping and see:

American’s get “GIF.”

The UK gets “omnishambles.”

Yeah, it’s obvious who the OED favorite is. GIF? Really? I don’t know if I’m more offended that that’s our word, or by the fact that that wasn’t a word already.  People have been sending GIFs for as long as the Internet has had viruses.

Beware strangers bearing GIFs.

GIF? It’s already given way to the Jpeg  and the PIX.

Omnishambles? It means “a situation that has been comprehensively mismanaged, characterized by a string of blunders and miscalculations.“ 

I thought that was a presidency. 

Well apparently it’s not.  It’s an omnishambles, and the UK gets it, and we don’t. We get GIF. It’s that reindeer sweater all over again.