Last year it was Selfie. Oxford Dictionary’s word of the year was on everyone’s lips and accepting it wasn’t difficult at all because we were busy pouting and clicking! Yeah, go check out our Facebook timeline and Insta profiles… duck faces, fish faces, pouty lips and whatnot. So selfie seemed like the perfect term to add to the dictionary. It was about time too.
But this year’s word of the year was a whole different story. I mean I hadn’t even heard of it before, let alone able to accept it. The word of the year 2014 is Vape. What the heck does that mean? My thoughts exactly. Well, it means ‘to inhale and exhale the vapour produced by an electronic cigarette or a similar device’. Are you kidding me? I don’t see anyone using that word anywhere. No one seems to be talking about it neither are the social networking sites full of that particular word or hashtag. What was Oxford Dictionary thinking, or wait, were they not thinking at all?
I agree e-smoking is on the rise and people are letting go of the death sticks and are moving on to electronic cigarettes which are harmless and allow the smokers to smoke without killing themselves. But making a word completely unheard of, the word of the year, *eyeroll*!
May be it will create awareness amongst the smoking community and because of this word more people will choose e-cigarettes over the real ones. Studies reveal that it even helps the ones trying to quit smoking 60 per cent more than the nicotine patches or gum. But are they safe? We’ll leave that discussion for another day.
Here are some more words which are in the running for the word of the year 2014.
Bae: A term of endearment for one’s romantic person. It is like a short form for baby or babe. The century of SMS lingo has made us shorten our terms of endearment too. Wow!
Contactless: One of the most popular words, it describes technology that lets you connect wirelessly for anything.
Normcore: I sure like this word. It means trying out a fashion movement in which unfashionable clothing is worn as a deliberate statement. Couldn’t Oxford Dictionary have chosen this word instead?
Slacktivism: This new word added to the dictionary refers to the actions which are performed via the Internet to support a political or social cause. For example, signing or joining a campaign group on a social media website. Now I know what supporting Modi Sarkar was called.
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