"McJob" is just one of 10,000 new words, or new meanings for old words, listed in Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 11th Edition. Browse the company's online sampler of the latest additions for a fascinating glimpse of what the English language -- as eclectic a scavenger as the crow -- has picked up in the last five years. The haul suggests that lexicographers spend their time either hurrying to catch up or streaking way ahead of the curve -- or perhaps that impression simply reflects our own standing as a cultural "tweener" ("a player who has some but not necessarily all of the necessary characteristics for each of two or more positions"). Thus, it's a shock to find words like "bubble" only now being painstakingly defined as "a state of booming activity . . . that often ends in a sudden collapse." If bubble didn't merit inclusion in the 10th Edition (1998), no new word did. The same surely goes for "navel-gazing," a synonym for self-absorption so hoary it should be leaving, not entering. Or for the ubiquitous "mosh pit." On the other hand, we have never heard of "waitron" (a "blend of waiter or waitress and -tron, suggesting the machinelike impersonality of such work") or "dead presidents," slang for U.S. dollars. But it's good to see "bupkus" at last, a word that pops up irritatingly often and which we have had to figure out for ourselves meant, basically, beans, nothing, zip. Now we know why (it's from the Yiddish for goat-droppings). Lexicography is an inexact science. Many of these new words will almost certainly not survive their era. Who will still be saying "phat" in 2010? But as a snapshot of English as it is spoken, for richer or poorer, in 2003, this book can hardly be bettered. Besides, if it didn't strive to be all-inclusive, it wouldn't be worth bupkus.
