Some words take years to achieve new meanings in dictionaries.
For years, wedgie meant only a type of shoe. Now, according to Webster’s New World tome, wedgie also means jerking underpants upward to wedge them between buttocks.
Hell, children, sports nuts and other immature types have been using that term for decades.
But 57 other words, relatively new on the scene, also have been added to the English language in NWD’s forthcoming edition.
Among them: blog, chad, digital camera, identity theft, paintball, e-commerce, touch screen, etc.
But street cred and sheesh? Since when have they achieved “relatively broad and frequent use” during the past three years?
It’s enough to give one an irritable bowel syndrome. (20 MARCH 2005)
