If you read me regularly at all, you know I'm an advocate for birthing new words out of necessity or even convenience.
Merriam-Webster, who I like to imagine as the Odd Couple of the Dictionary Business (but only because it's late and I'm slightly delirious), now offers the most popular words not in the dictionary, including such hits as "ginormous" and "w00t." I'm an advocate for the former, but completely opposed to the latter, and I don't know why. I also recognize "chillax," though I've never actually encountered it first-person.
And if your fake-today/dogma-tomorrow lexiconography still hungers, you can read the archive for more hidden jems like detroitus and my altogether favorite espacular!
May 31, 2005 2:07 AMHeh. I think opposition to "w00t" is justified, 'cuz the intuition that words should not be made of numerals is a good one, perhaps our last bastion against a wholesale corruption of the tongue into an unrecognizeable mass of digits and scribblings.
@fter a11, 1 kn ez1-e C that this sort of spelling just won't do.
Cheers!
PGE