The Oxford English Dictionary’s “What’s New In Trollcore English” Word of the Year for 2014 is, as you may already know, “vape.”
Among people that pride themselves on having both standards and a brain—a category in which I’ve never pretended to claim a place—the OED Word of the Year is primarily an occasion for a good bit of highbrow Drunk-Uncle hemming and hawing.
This is good. This is just what the OED wants, as is evidenced by their shortlist, which includes the tech-bro “contactless” as well as the hall-of-fame troll success “normcore” and the painfully awkward Columbus job “bae.”
What we have with the Oxford English Dictionaries Word of the Year is institutional moat-building at its best. The more that people begin to reflexively fear a future full of frantically vaping teenagers wearing head-to-toe Fancy Adidas and calling each other Old Bae, the more a vaunted institution such as the Oxford English Dictionary matters, and somehow, the less obvious it seems that the OED is just like any of us: running some shit up the flagpole to see who’s gonna salute. When the OED picks a serious word of the year (2011’s “squeezed middle,” for example) we forget about it. Goodbye, squeezed middle.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
