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Editors add 455 new words to Merriam-Webster's online dictionary

NOEL KING, HOST:

Are too many fluffernutters giving you a dad bod?

AMARTÍNEZ, HOST:

No. What have you heard?

KING: (Laughter).

MARTÍNEZ: Do your vote-a-rama sessions always descend into whataboutism?

KING: If those questions do not make sense, don't worry. You can look up those words in the Merriam-Webster online dictionary. They added 455 new words and definitions this month.

MARTÍNEZ: Peter Sokolowski is Merriam-Webster's editor-at-large.

PETER SOKOLOWSKI: The sort of fun part of the job is noticing new vocabulary and then watching it grow. We don't want to add a term that might fall away from usage. We need a lot of evidence.

MARTÍNEZ: Some words, though, made an immediate impact, like those we've come to know during the pandemic.

SOKOLOWSKI: In this case, we have new senses of existing terms like breakthrough, as in breakthrough infection.

(SOUNDBITE OF MONTAGE)

ALLISON AUBREY, BYLINE: ...Risk of getting a breakthrough infection that...

JOE PALCA, BYLINE: ...Could get a breakthrough infection.

ANTHONY FAUCI: ...Had a breakthrough infection.

SOKOLOWSKI: And superspreader.

(SOUNDBITE OF MONTAGE)

TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: That turned into a superspreader event.

ROB STEIN, BYLINE: ...Of a superspreader event that occurred...

SOKOLOWSKI: Which we had defined referring to an individual who spread disease among a population. But now it refers, of course, to events or locations that are responsible for the spread of the disease.

KING: Some of the words have been around for decades, like fluffernutter. Come on.

SOKOLOWSKI: It refers to a peanut butter and marshmallow fluff sandwich.

(SOUNDBITE OF ADVERTISEMENT)

UNIDENTIFIED PEOPLE: (Singing) First, you spread, spread, spread your bread with peanut butter and marshmallow fluff and have a fluffernutter.

SOKOLOWSKI: This is a term that is somewhat regional, and maybe that's why it's new to many people. It's not new to me because I grew up in New England.

MARTÍNEZ: And that's where the dad bod comes in.

KING: (Laughter).

MARTÍNEZ: Now, more food enters the Merriam-Webster lexicon, this time borrowed from Spanish. And I can't believe it's taken this long to include the creamy drink horchata and the crispy pork snack chicharron.

SOKOLOWSKI: English has a voracious appetite for words from other languages. And the language has this elastic capacity to grow.

KING: Just a few more as evidence of that growth - deplatform, Oobleck, faux-hawk, bit rot. If you don't know what they mean, now you can look them up.

(SOUNDBITE OF J. MANIFESTO'S "MONOLOGUE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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SOMOS CONNECTICUT es una iniciativa de Connecticut Public, la emisora local de NPR y PBS del estado, que busca elevar nuestras historias latinas y expandir programación que alza y informa nuestras comunidades latinas locales. Visita CTPublic.org/latino para más reportajes y recursos. Para noticias, suscríbase a nuestro boletín informativo en ctpublic.org/newsletters.

Federal funding is gone.

Congress has eliminated all funding for public media.

That means $21 million per year that Connecticut Public relied on to deliver you news, information, and entertainment programs you enjoyed is gone.

The future of public media is in your hands.

All donations are appreciated, but we ask in this moment you consider starting a monthly gift as a Sustainer to help replace what’s been lost.