Nepo baby, Blursday among new words added to Dictionary.com

Looking to expand your vocabulary with words like nepo baby and Blursday?

Dictionary.com has revealed a bunch of new terms that it’s recently added to its database.

“They represent the always-evolving nature of English and our lexicographers’ neverending efforts to document it,” notes dictionary.com

According to the website, this update includes a mix of complicated technical jargon, loanwords from languages around the world, and other.

The list includes 556 new entries, 2,256 revised definitions of words, and 348 new definitions.

Here are some highlights:

Jawn

Jawn is a noun that originates from Philadelphia. It’s defined as “something or someone for which the speaker does not know or does not know a specific name.”

An example of a sentence jawn is used in is: “Can you hand me that jawn right there” notes dictionary.com.

The website adds that the catchphrase was popularized by the Black community in the early 2000s.

Nepo baby

What do Hailey Beiber, Kendall Jenner, Maude Apatow, and Timothée Chalamet have in common? They’re all considered nepo babies.

The term is defined as “a celebrity with a parent who is also famous, especially one whose industry connections are perceived as essential to their success.”

Blursday

You know that feeling when some days feel like they’re all meshed together, making for a neverending week? There’s a word for that, and it’s “Blursday.”

According to dictionary.com, “made-up day names are meant to capture the sameyness vibe of busy lives and work. Similar terms include Whoseday and Whensday.”

Greenwashing

Do you wonder if using paper straws is actually making a difference in helping the environment? Or are they an example of greenwashing?

Greenwashing is defined as “an instance or practice of promoting or affiliating a brand, campaign, mission, etc., with environmentalism as a ploy to divert attention from policies and activities that are in fact anti-environmentalist.”

Decision fatigue

Do you ever get tired of trying to figure out what to order from Uber Eats or what to watch on Netflix? You’re probably suffering from decision fatigue.

Decision fatigue is the “mental and emotional exhaustion resulting from excessive or relentless decision-making, especially the cumulative effect of small decisions that one makes throughout each day.”

Coffee nap

Here’s a life hack: If you want to feel the most energized after a nap, drink coffee right before. It’s called a “coffee nap” and is described as “a short nap, usually 15-30 minutes, taken immediately after drinking a cup of coffee, the claimed benefit being that the energizing effect of caffeine may be bolstered by a sleeping body’s drop in adenosine levels.”

Chatbot

AI usage is on the rise, and several of dictionary.com’s added words reflect that.

Take “chatbot” for example. It’s defined as “a computer program designed to respond with conversational or informational replies to verbal or written messages from users.”

Stress eating

This word is pretty self-explanatory. What do you do when you’re on the verge of a mental breakdown? You stress eat, of course.

Atmospheric river

This term will be quite familiar to those living on Canada’s west coast. An atmospheric river is a “long, narrow corridor in the atmosphere that transports massive amounts of concentrated water vapor from the tropics: often responsible for extratropical cyclones and other extreme weather events, but also for commonly weaker systems of rain that replenish water supplies.”

In order to add new words, dictionary.com says it adds new words based on a set of criteria used by other lexicographers.

They determine if the word is used by a lot of people if it’s used by those people in mainly the same way, if it’s likely to stick around, and if it’s useful for a general audience.

“Of course, many words have different shades of meaning for different people,” notes dictioanry.com.

“But to be added to the dictionary, a word must have a shared meaning (that is, it must communicate a widely agreed-upon meaning from one person to the next).”

Check out the full list of new words added to dictionary.com here.

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