Safe Space' Among 1,000 New Words Added To Merriam-Webster Dictionary

During last years presidential debates, and through this years inauguration, Merriam-Webster has been an active presence on Twitter, sharing words experiencing an uptick in search, or funny, relevant trivia.You might even say the dictionary provided a safe space on social media, or a place (as on a college campus) intended to be free of bias, conflict, criticism, or potentially threatening actions, ideas, or conversations.Its fitting, then, that safe space is among the 1,000 new additions Merriam-Webster madeto its online dictionary today. The word was first used in 1970, and has been used by colleges post-election to describe themselves as campuses that will protect students who might feel in danger due to their religious beliefs, sexual orientation, race or gender.Not all of the added words have been around for decades. Some of them, like binge-watch and photobomb, are products of newer technologies, but saw big spikes in recent use.We now enter 'ghost' as a verb, and @giphy made us this GIF to celebrate the occasion. https://t.co/hvj0UVimiK pic.twitter.com/T6sHSc9rYC Merriam-Webster (@MerriamWebster) February 7, 2017 In an announcement, Merriam-Webster explained its methodology: In some cases, terms have been observed for years and are finally being added; in others, the fast rise and broad acceptance of a term has made for a quicker journey.In a statement to The Huffington Post, Merriam-Websters editor-at-large Peter Sokolowski added that the words announced today were added to the dictionarys digital pages. The online dictionary gives us both more space to expand entries and a way to add them more quickly, he said.Other entries are updates of pre-existing words, such as ghost used as an informal verb, and train wreck used metaphorically to describe an utter disaster or mess.The new additions come from medicine, sports, literature, fashion, politics and technology. One even comes from the name of a prolific word inventor ' Seussian, meaning suggestive of the works of Dr. Seuss.You can read a fuller list of the dictionarys additions here. -- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
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