Fluffernutters make us feel hygge, but TBH they’re giving us dad bods.
If that sentence didn’t make sense to you — worry not, as definitions for most of these terms can now be looked up in the dictionary.
On Wednesday, Merriam-Webster announced that 455 new words have been added to the dictionary, including “TBH”, “faux-hawk”, and “fluffernutter”.
The dictionary is constantly updating its content as new words are introduced to the general lexicon all the time.
As ways of communicating have evolved, so too has the language we use to do it.
Amid a global pandemic, we’ve also had to adapt to new vocabulary to stay clued in on the latest policy and research news.
Here is a handful of terms used in popular and online culture, and their meanings, from the list of 455 new words:
- TBH : an abbreviation for "to be honest." TBH is frequently used in social media and text messaging.
- FTW : an abbreviation for "for the win" —used especially to express approval or support. In social media, FTW is often used to acknowledge a clever or funny response to a question or meme.
- amirite : slang used in writing for "am I right" to represent or imitate the use of this phrase as a tag question in informal speech. An example: “English spelling is consistently inconsistent, amirite?”
- dad bod : a physique regarded as typical of an average father. Typically used to describe a physique that is slightly overweight and not extremely muscular.
- faux-hawk : a hairstyle resembling a Mohawk in having a central ridge of upright hair but with the sides gathered or slicked upward or back instead of shaved.
- otaku : a person having an intense or obsessive interest especially in the fields of anime and manga —often used before another noun.
Merriam-Webster also added words concerning the pandemic, including definitions for “super-spreader”, “long Covid”, and “vaccine passports”.
Tech-related words were also included, such as “teraflop” which is a unit of measure for the calculating speed of a computer equal to one trillion floating-point operations per second.
New words that entered political discourse this year include “astroturf” which is used to describe a movement that is falsely made to appear “grassroots”. The term, borrowed from artificial turf, is used to describe political efforts, campaigns, or organizations that appear to be funded and run by ordinary people but are in fact backed by powerful groups.
Culinary terms were also added, including a definition for a “fluffernutter”, which is a sandwich made with peanut butter and marshmallow crème between two slices of white bread.
The dictionary previously updated the dictionary in January, including words such as “silver fox”, an attractive middle-aged man having mostly gray or white hair, and “hygge”, a cosy quality that makes a person feel content and comfortable.
Since Facebook rebranded, searches for “meta” on Merriam-Webster’s website spiked 59,000 per cent.
After the announcement, the name change naturally led to its fair share of memes and jokes. To be fair it is a bit of a naff name, amirite?
