What new word has dominated 2008? Nonebrity, perhaps? No, I have never used it either. It is a portmanteau term for a ‘celebrity nonentity’ and is one suggestion for words of the year proposed by Susie Dent, who appears on Countdown, a programme that anyone claiming incapacity benefit is obliged to watch on pain of disqualification.
Miss Dent popularises philology for the Oxford University Press and, in her recent book Words of the Year, she plays with neologisms such as moofer (‘mobile out-of-office worker’), scuppie (‘socially conscious, upwardly-mobile person’) and funt (‘financially untouchable’). I do not think they are anything but vogue terms. Even if some people understand them today, they’ll be forgotten soon.
Over at Collins Dictionaries, the publicists announced that meh will be added to its 30th anniversary edition. Meh is ‘an expression of utter boredom or an indication of how little you care for an idea’.
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