A new English word is created about every 98 minutes, according to the website The Global Language Monitor. Based on that rate, English passed the millionth word mark earlier today.
Here are the 10 latest words in the English language:
For the full story, visit the GLM website: Link1,000,000: Web 2.0 – The next generation of web products and services, coming soon to a browser near you.
999,999: Jai Ho! – The Hindi phrase signifying the joy of victory, used as an exclamation, sometimes rendered as “It is accomplished”. Achieved English-language popularity through the multiple Academy Award Winning film, “Slumdog Millionaire”.
999,998: N00b — From the Gamer Community, a neophyte in playing a particular game; used as a disparaging term.
999,997: Slumdog – a formerly disparaging, now often endearing, comment upon those residing in the slums of India.
999,996: Cloud Computing – The ‘cloud’ has been technical jargon for the Internet for many years. It is now passing into more general usage.
999,995: Carbon Neutral — One of the many phrases relating to the effort to stem Climate Change.
999,994: Slow Food — Food other than the fast-food variety hopefully produced locally (locavores).
999,993: Octomom – The media phenomenon relating to the travails of the mother of the octuplets.
999,992: Greenwashing – Re-branding an old, often inferior, product as environmentally friendly.
999,991: Sexting – Sending email (or text messages) with sexual content.
I doubt they would, Shakespeare wrote 300+ years ago in Elizabethan English, whereas the Victorian era was mere 110 years ago. Most people find the language of Dickens, Thackeray, Georg Eliot, the Bronte sisters and Lewis Carroll much easier going than Shakespeare.
That said, Tempscire may well be correct, Victorians might be shocked to find that we don't all write like Macaulay, but nor did they write like Bacon, Spenser, Marlow or indeed Shakespeare.
These are the best online definitions of "word" I can find, they are from the online Macquarie Dictionary (Australia), interestingly the online Websters & Oxford dictionaries only list the first one
1. a sound or a combination of sounds, or its written or printed representation, used in any language as the sign of a concept.
2. a grammatical element which can stand alone as an utterance, not divisible into two or more parts; thus boy and boyish, but not -ish or boy scout, the former being less than a word, the latter more.
It seems to me that the first would allow for two or more elements as in Carbon Neutral, whilst the second would certainly not. Even tho' I'm an Australian I'd say that the second definition would be closer to most peoples understanding of what a "word" actually is.
Things like Web 2.0, Slow Food, Clown Computing etc might be said to be "labels" as in - a short word or phrase of description for a person, group, movement, idea etc.
The first page of the American Heritage Dictionary list s "Aaron's Rod" (an archetectural term).
"Slow Food" would qualify; "Cloud computing" maybe not.
The main problem with the list is that none of those terms have been added to the language in the last couple days. The newest are probably "greenwash" or "sexting" and they've even been around for about 6 months. "Web 2.0" has been part of the language for about 4 years, and "n00b" may be entering it's second decade.
The actual 1,000,000th word will probably not enter common usage for 3 months to a year (if it even enters common usage).