Overwhelmed with the constant tsunami of new English words?

With an average of 1,000 words officially accepted every year, the Language Service Industry braces for their tsunami impact both good and bad. I want to make the situation worse…

At the rate that the English language is growing, maybe there’s a societal reason behind it. The Global Language Monitor states that we actually create an average of 5,400 words a year. Most of these are not being used at a wide scale. How does this reflect on us culturally? The effects of rapid modernization forces us to find new words like “metaverse” and “cryptocurrency.” But also, we are a society that easily rejects or quickly evolves our traditional culture. We are re-identifying established words like “aware” with “woke,” or “part time jobs” with “side hustles.” 

After some reflection, our tsunami-like word growth has to be due to our insatiability to be a part of the avant-garde, ready to adopt non-traditional language into our lives.

Examples in other countries

I’ll give you an example of why this is not the same in all countries: 

When I was doing language training in a tradition-centric Spanish speaking country, we shared the word “ambicioso” for ambitious and “raro” for rare. In that country, those two words had a strong negative connotation when describing people. But in the U.S. the words are generally positive, describing people with a sense of reverence or admiration: “She’s very ambitious with her business.” “He’s a rare breed.” I asked why those words were considered negative and I was told that society looks down upon the avant-garde and out-of-the-box thinkers. 

How do we keep up with this pace, even as the English speaking world evolves so rapidly? Well, my answer is to add two more! 

I am shocked that the word “evaluee” is not officially accepted. The red spell check line is telling me this now. The evaluation process requires an evaluator and… you get the picture. A Google search shows that it is widely accepted, but it’s not officially accepted. 

Also, “circumlocute.” Why do language instructors teach circumlocution, but can’t use it as a verb? We “circumlocute” all the time, when we can’t remember the word we want to use. 

Am I part of the avant-garde? I’d like to think so! So, if it is a tsunami of new words entering our vernacular every year, then I guess we all have to learn how to surf it!

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