Word To Your Mother

Let's talk about words. Each year the scholars over at Merriam-Webster decide which new words to add the the dictionary thus making them fair game for Scrabble players. This year they added more than a 100 new ones. Here are a few they've decided are page worthy, along with my comments. The year is parenthesis is the year that the word was first spotted in print. I have taken the words and definitions from this website.

Air quotes (1989): gesture made by raising and flexing the index and middle fingers of both hands, used to call attention to a spoken word or expression. -- For my money there is gesture in the world as annoying as this one. The air semi-colon however is one of my favorites, and both still beat playing the air guitar while listening to Foreigner's "Jukebox Hero" in your best friend's basement.

Dirty bomb (1956): bomb designed to release radioactive material -- And I thought this just meant you added olive juice to the mixture. Oh wait, that's a dirty martini.

Edamame (1951): immature green soybeans, usually in the pod -- What? These soybeans laugh at fart jokes and snicker like Beavis and Butthead when their teacher talks about Uranus? Either way they're green and nasty and I ain't eating them.

Netroots (2003): grassroots political activists who communicate via the Internet, especially by blogs. -- Those rascally bloggers

Pescatarian (1993): vegetarian whose diet includes fish. -- Hey, I'm not a carnivore after all. I'm a meatatarian.

Pretexting (1992): presenting oneself as someone else to obtain private information -- I thought maybe this is what you did if you were air quoting to warm up your fingers before sending a text message on your Iphone.

Prosecco (1881): a dry Italian sparkling wine. -- Is there a reason it took a 127 years before this word was recognized? Did this one get voted in by the old-timers committee? (If you're not a baseball fan you may not get that reference)

Racino (1995): racetrack at which slot machines are available for gamblers. -- I prefer a pokacino, but thena gian that sounds more like a drink at Starbucks than a place to play poker and wager on the ponies.

Supercross (1983): motorcycle race held in a stadium on a dirt track having hairpin turns and high jumps. -- Only 25 years for this one. Supercross says "Eat my dirt Prosecco.!"

Texas Hold 'em (1995): Poker in which each player is dealt two cards face down and all players share five cards dealt face-up. -- Come one everybody join in ...

So I handed him my bottle and he drank down my last swallow.
Then he bummed a cigarette and asked me for a light.
And the night got deathly quiet, and his face lost all expression.
Said, if you're gonna play the game, boy, ya gotta learn to play it right.

You got to know when to hold em, know when to fold em,
Know when to walk away and know when to run.
You never count your money when you're sittin' at the table.
There ll be time enough for countin' when the dealins done.

Call me crazy, but I think the Webster board added a gambling, wine drinker to this year's committee.