“Queerbaiting,” “Microdosing” And “Pinkwashing” Among The New Words Added To Dictionary.com
March 3, 2023“Queerbaiting,” “microdosing” and many other modern coinages are officially part of the English lexicon, according to dictionary.com.
The online reference site announced Tuesday that it’s added 313 new entries, 130 new definitions for existing entries and 1,140 revised definitions to its database.
Many of the newcomers — like “pinkwashing,” “cyberflashing” and “rage farming” — come straight out of internet culture.
Image Credit: Pixabay
“It’s not surprising to me that this new digital context of our lives is necessitating a new kind of language,” John Kelly of Dictionary.com was quoted as saying by CNN.
“It’s interesting that a lot of a new language does give label to more toxic or harmful behavior,” he added.
“Rage farming,” for example, can be described as the act of sharing certain political information online in order to drum up anger or fury among a certain ideological group, whether for clicks or for just for the heck of it.
“Pinkwashing” refers to the act of companies posting pro-LGBTQ+ items in a superficial manner “as a ploy to divert attention from allegiances and activities that are in fact hostile to such liberties,” according to the Dictionary.com definition.
Celebrities like Harry Styles, Bad Bunny and Cardi B have been accused of “queerbaiting.” The term refers to how high-profile individuals may use homoerotic or LGBTQ+ themes to attract members of those communities when they are not actually identifying as such themselves.
Other new words added to Dictionary.com include “trauma dumping” and “cyberflashing,” according to ‘Yahoo! Sports’.
Abbreviations were also added. Acronyms getting the Dictionary.com imprimatur include “WOC” for “women of color.” “Latine,” an alternative to “Latinx,” is in the book, too.
Highlights also include “liminal space,” “self-coup,” “cakeism,” “subvariant,” “microdosing” and “paratha.”
Read related myGwork articles here:
18 LGBTQ+ Words Added To The Oxford English Dictionary
French Dictionary Includes Gender-Neutral Pronoun, Sparking Linguistic Debate
dictionary.com Adds More LGBT+ Words, But Will Use “Homosexuality” Less
Merriam-Webster Dictionary Has Updated ‘They’ To Include Nonbinary Pronoun
Keep up to date with the latest myGnews