New words in the OED

The OED announced it’s list of new words this week. 

Here are some of them, including a few thoughts of my own:

• chill pill- a notional pill taken to make someone calm down
• chillax- calm down and relax
• bargainous- costing less than is usual or than might be expected; cheap or relatively cheap

I don’t like it when the OED adds words that I cannot use because doing so would make me sound stupid and/or thirteen-years old.  These three words fit this category well.  They were not meant for fully matured human beings.

• wardrobe malfunction- an instance of a person accidentally exposing an intimate part of their body as a result of an article of clothing slipping out of position

It’s interesting that the person who first popularized this phrase did not actually experience a wardrobe malfunction but had instead underestimated the reaction of viewers to a woman exposing her breasts during a Super Bowl halftime show. 

• fussbudget- a fussy person
• vuvuzela- long horn blown by fans at soccer matches

My mother was using fussbudget thirty years ago.  How does it take that long for a word like fussbudget to make it into the dictionary when a word like vuvuzela gets in after one World Cup soccer tournament?

• soft skills- personal attributes that enable someone to interact effectively and harmoniously with other people

I don’t hold these “skills” in high regard, and as a result, I find their name amusingly appropriate.  Soft skills… funny. 

Nerf skills would have been even better. 

• cool hunter- a person whose job it is to make observations or predictions about new styles and trends

Are you kidding me?  Then I’d like to be a cool hunter hunter and eliminate this scourge from the Earth.

• automagically- automatically and in a way that seems ingenious, inexplicable, or magical
• catastrophizing view or present a situation as considerably worse than it actually is
• matchy-matchy- excessively color-coordinated
• frenemy- a person with whom one is friendly despite a fundamental dislike or rivalry

I approve of all these words and like them a lot.  I have used all except for catastrophizing, but now that I’m aware of the word, I expect that I’ll be using it a lot.  I know  a lot of people who make it a habit of catastrophizing for reasons that I never understand. 

In fact, I am probably an anti-catastrophizer, preferring to make light of most situations regardless of their severity, which has a tendency to infuriate catastrophizers.

Some people just enjoy problems.  They savor them.  Bask in their misfortune.  I sometimes wonder if they think they are in a television series, and to have a problem-free, drama-free life would be bad for their personal ratings.