Ticomaya wrote:Humphreys -- It's apparently a British swear word.
hehe, So I've read!
Here's some new words for the dictionary, too:
Crackberry, podcast make 2005 word list: Canadian Oxford Dictionary
at 15:42 on December 16, 2005, EST.
TORONTO (CP) - How many times have you checked your crackberry today? Are you seeing your friend with benefits tonight? Have you downloaded a podcast?
If none of the above makes sense to you, then you may have been living in seclusion this past year. Crackberry, friends with benefits and podcast are among the key words of 2005, according to the editors of the Canadian Oxford Dictionary.
Each year the editors assess which new words gained in prominence.
"Podcasting started in late 2004 and has really taken off," says Katherine Barber, editor-in-chief of dictionaries at Oxford University Press Canada's Toronto office.
And podcast - which will be added to the next edition of the dictionary - wasn't the only new technology-related word. Crackberry (a nickname for the addictive BlackBerry), infomania, snaparazzi, VoIP and Wi-Fi also became a part of our vocabulary.
Also on the Oxford list are Sudoku, the numbers-based puzzle, and parkour, the sport of running and climbing over urban structures.
Relationship words include the aforementioned "friends with benefits," meaning friends who have sex regularly with each other without being in a committed romantic relationship.
The term "wing girl" was also noticed. It refers to a pretty girl hired by a man to accompany him to a party in the hopes of making him more attractive to other women.
While these words were on the tip of our collective tongue this year, not all of them will make it into the dictionary, says Barber.
"We'll have to wait and see how well they establish themselves in general parlance before entering them in a dictionary," she said.