Funny Words In Macquarie Dictionary 2008

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By Staff

Saturday, January 10, 2009, 12:09

Some of the most bizarre words have made it to the Macquarie Dictionary's online edition. Words like 'Climate porn', 'flashpacking', 'toxic debt', 'wellness tourism' and 'fanta pants' are newly included words on the list.

Susan Butler, the editor of the Macquarie Dictionary, says that the words were selected as per recent elections in America. “There were two big things that happened in 2008. One you can't use because it's a proper noun, and that's Obama. The second was subprime," The Sydney Morning Herald quoted Butler as saying.

The British influenced fanta pants refers to 'pubic hair as the indicator of hair colour' is actually the famous orange colored soft drink. Words like 'ecocentrism', referring to the philosophy in which the 'ecosphere' is more important than an organism or human activity, made it to the list, making the environment influenced words a trend.

Similarly 'plastic soup', referring to a mass of plastic on an ocean gyre and climate porn, referring to alarmist predictions about the progress of global warming are the other climate inspired words.

According to Les Murray, who is a poet and Macquarie committee member, picked up some words like ifestreaming (the online recording of one's daily life), that sound better than what they mean.

He also said that there are words like Uberveillance (omnipresent electronic surveillance through devices embedded in the body), that are futuristic. His personal favourite for beauty was water footprint (the amount of fresh water used by a country, business or individual).

The readers can vote for their favourite word online and the most popular word will be announced on February. The most favourite word for the year 2007 was ' password fatigue' which means unable to remember the various number of passwords by a user. AGENCIES