I headed off to college with a brand new typewriter and a brand new dictionary. The dictionary was the Webster’s Collegiate Edition. That book served me well through four years of undergraduate and four years of graduate work. The typewriter also performed well throughout those same years. Thirty years later, when our children headed off to college, there were new dictionaries for each. We also bought dictionaries as gifts for nieces and nephews. But the change was already in the air. Our children had new computers for their college careers and practically no one was using typewriters for anything anymore.

These days printed dictionaries can’t keep up with the changes in language use and spelling. The Oxford English Dictionary, hailed by scholars as the standard in language definition, is no longer available as a set of printed volumes. These days it is an online reference, frequently updated. OxfordDictionaries.com issues quarterly updates on current definitions of English words. New words are coming at us so fast, that it is easy to feel like you are being left behind and can’t keep up.

This quarter’s update article on the website begins as follows: “NBD, but are you ready to fangirl over our dictionary update? Abso-bloody-lutely. We’ve got some awesome sauce new words - no, rly - that will inform and entertain whether you’re hungry or it’s already wine o’clock. Mic drop.” It isn’t what one might expect from that stalwart bastion of proper English Usage with the motto, “Language matters.”

I turn to the Oxford Dictionary web site to check out the proper spelling and usage of words. It is also a helpful source on the differences between American English and British English. Spelling seems to be taking a bit of a different course in our countries. We write “color”; the Brits write “colour.” There are lots of other examples: theater/theatre, meter/metre/annex/annexe, draft/draught, maneuver/manoeuvre, plow/plough. A decade ago, when we were writing curriculum for a Canadian publisher, we learned that in addition to the differences between British and American usages of the language there are other, more subtle variations such as Canadian and Australian English. The decision of the publishers, no doubt biased by the physical location of their offices, was that Canadian English constituted a good version for an international audience. Their opinion wasn’t shared by the British Publisher of the print editions of an online resource we produced a few years back, who opted for American English for the books.

This language we speak is complex and fascinating.

Here are some examples from the list of new words added to the Oxford English Dictionary in its August, 2015 update:

Manspreading is “the practice whereby a man, especially one travelling on public transport, adopts a sitting position with his legs wide apart, in such a way as to encroach on an adjacent seat or seats.”

Although coined in 2012, Brexit (Britain + exit) and Grexit (Greece + exit), have been added to the dictionary to describe the possibilities of changes in the countries that use the euro as their national currency.

As long as we are using words with an x, The title “Mx” has been added to the dictionary. First used as far back as the 1970’s, this title took quite a bit of time to make it into official Oxford recognition. We’ve all adjusted to the addition of “Ms” to the list of Mr, Miss, and Mrs. While Ms. doesn’t disclose marital status and can be applied to both married and unmarried women, Mx isn’t specific in gender and can be applied to both male and female persons.

Beer o’clock and wine o’clock refer to the time of day when you have your first glass of your preferred alcoholic beverage. I guess you shouldn’t start drinking too much if you are hangry - a blend of the words hungry and angry, meaning “bad-tempered or irritable as a result of hunger.” I guess if you are hangry, anything snackable will help.

Despite the official recognition of the Oxford English Dictionary, the spell checker on my word processor is having a tough time with these new words. I had to turn off the autocorrect feature in order to write the last paragraph.

Despite our use of terms such as Old English, the reality is that language has always been in transition. The invention of the printing press gave rise to the attempt to standardize language use and spelling during the sixteenth century - relatively recently in the wider span of history. Standardization of spelling and usage of American English as a distinct form of the language didn’t really gain traction until the 1755 publication of Samuel Johnson’s dictionary.

Back when Dictionaries were print books, one could count the number of words in the language. The Second Edition 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary contains full entries for 171,476 words in current use and an additional 47,156 obsolete words. With the quarterly updates and additional technical and regional words now recognized by the OED, there might be as many as 750,000 recognized words in the English language.

That translates to a half million new words since I left for college with my new Webster’s dictionary in hand. If I had been disciplined to learn the Oxford English Dictionary’s word a day, which I have not, I might have been able to learn an additional 15,000 new words in that amount of time, leaving me with 485,000 new words yet to learn. I’m falling farther behind with each passing day!

Somehow, in the midst of this language revolution, we continue to maintain the ability to communicate, if rather imperfectly. I continue to use words not only in my blog, but also in sermons and in conversation with people. Given the possibilities, it shouldn’t surprise us if miscommunication occasionally occurs. Perhaps it is more surprising that we are able to communicate at all.

Having said that, I don’t think that all of the new entries in the dictionary will be around for very long. A few might stick and we’ll be using them decades from now.

I doubt, however, that I’ll be substituting awesomesauce for excellent anytime soon.

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