What’s in a Word?

Cricket McRae

Writers love words. Readers love words. There are many of us who actually see words when we think. (Do you?) And new words continually crop up that reflect changes in technology and culture. There was a story on the news just last week about the recent addition of “LOL” and “OMG” to the Oxford English Dictionary.
Along with “taquito”.
Several new terms have recently come to my attention. At least they’re new to me. Now, it’s possible that I’m woefully behind the times, unaware of current cultural touchstones simply because I’m spending the majority of my time locked away in a basement office. Have you heard of these? Do you use them regularly?
Decruitment: Euphemism for laying off employees.
Gastrosexuals: Men who cook as a hobby, aren’t afraid to wear an apron, and often use their cooking skills to impress friends and potential partners.
Noughties: A reference to the years between 2000 and 2009, like the “thirties”, “sixties”, etc.
Notspot: An area where there is no or only very slow Internet access.
Recessionista: Someone who dresses with great style on a tight budget.
Spinnish: The language used when trying to present not-so-favorable information in a favorable light. This came up in relation to the idea of “kinetic military action”.
Vook: A combination of video, text, images and social streams in an electronic book.
Wordle (tm): At first I heard this in reference to a word cloud or text cloud, but it turned out to be a tool used to create a text cloud. I’ve heard of writers plugging in chunks of their prose to see what words they overuse (the most frequently used words appear larger in the text cloud).
What new terms have you encountered lately? Any favorites?