I’m not a huge stickler for dictionary usage, or even correct grammar alot of times. I sometimes make up my own language with such words as ‘crizazy’ - a more heightened meaning of crazy, or ‘Stamos’d’ - You’ve just been Stamos’d; what I say to a girl the next morning, like what I think my hero John Stamos says. Just because I have fun creating these words, doesn’t mean I think they should be in the actual dictionary. This brings us to today’s topic, the recent listings being added to the Merriam-Webster dictionary.

Every year about a hundred or so words get added to the already packed official dictionary. In the past years, there have been additions that have been suspect to say the least. In 2007, there was a laughable entry with the quasi-word ‘w00t‘. I’ve been seeing that word since about the late 90’s, which was mostly uttered by 12-15 males who got a headshot in Unreal Tournament. You could also find it in numerous forums around the internet, again with 12-15 males arguing over who would win in a fight, Superman or The Incredible Hulk. I can’t act all high and mighty, I use the word still to this day, and I’m 24 years old. But just because I use it, and people around the internet uses doesn’t mean it should be made official and be allowed into the english language. If anything it makes our language even dumber than it was, and takes away the mystique of ‘w00t’; so nobody wins.

This year’s technology based words aren’t nearly as questionable as w00t, as the entries were webinar, malware, netroots, pretexting, and fanboys. Fanboy is the addition I’m most skeptical about, but this word unlike w00t has roots all the way back to the Star Trek days. If you’ve never met a fanboy, then you really must someday. These are the people that have entire rooms of their house dedicated to things like Star Wars, Star Trek or some other kind of science fiction. They are also the people you see dress up in costumes at comic book conventions, and wait 8-10 hours in a line to be the first to shake Leonard Nimoy’s hand.

If I was a petition starting kind, I would be petitioning to stop Merriam Webster from adding “words” from l33t speak (leet speak, or geek speak) to our language. If you think ‘w00t’ is bad, then just wait until the slippery slope reaches terms such as OMGWTFBBQ, or ROFLcopters, or my personal fav, L33torz. So, for all of you who actually like to stand up for things please write Merriam Webster and let them know how disgusted you are over some of these entries. B4 u know the 3ng1ish l@ngu@g3 wi11 l00k lik dis.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 8th, 2008 at 6:41 am and is filed under Internet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.