This is later with Lee Matthews, the Lee Matthews Podcast. More of what
you hear weekday afternoons on the Drive. John Kelly is Vice president of Editorial
for dictionary dot com, the leading online and mobile English language education source.
I use it all the time. They have updated more than three thousand new,
updated, and revised words to the world's premier catalog of the English language.
To talk about those terms, John Kelly is joining me now on the
Drive, John, these aren't just words, but pop culture terms as well.
We have a wide range of categories that these new words fall in.
Yeah, they include pop calturns, playing, but they also include, you
know, a lot of the language changes in, say artificial intelligence. This
update, I think showcases the complexity of what it's like to be alive right
now, decision, fatigue, Jenner today, I sleep, debt. But
it also showcases the vibrancy the creativity of our language change, grand family,
coffee, blurs day. These are just a few examples. Yeah, I'm
looking at some of them myself, and I'm kind of a word I'm a
fan of words, especially old words that you don't hear used much anymore,
like matricious, pernicious, sagacious, all those kinds of words. Those are
great words, matricious, especially good one. Yeah, yeah, I think
we need to bring some of them back. But some of these two I've
not seen before. Jola, jola, flad, jola, bacca flawd.
You did you did so well? This is a ton he did so well.
I'm sick with pernicious. No, I'm just I think I will.
This is an Icelandic word. It's Icelandic. It literally means Christmas book flood
and it refers is this wonderful tradition of giving and reading a whole bunch of
books in Iceland around Christmas time? Have you ever heard of a ulogue or
yule tide? Here? Sure? Why the yola parts, the jo la
part, yola voca flows. That's kind of the same word as yule.
That can help you remember it. But this is just a delightful word.
I love the fact that it exists as a word. I love its sethisicity.
I also love how it showcases that English still does what it has always
done so well, which is adding new vocabulary by borrowing words from languages all
around the world, including Icelanders. Well, I guess a Jola Boca flawed
could be referred to as well as in the media. About this time of
year, there's a number of books that are released because of the upcoming Yule
Tide season. You know, we might. You know, I'm gonna tell
my left photographers to be on the lookout for a new sense of Yola vocal
floats on books marketing. So we're watching out. It'll it'll happen between now
and late November. You'll see it. It'll be this book and that book,
and then albums as well. But I don't know if that applies to
this word grand family. I can guess what that is referring to. Yeah,
a grand family is a name for an increasingly common family structure. This
is when you have kids that are primarily being raised and brought up by by
grandparents. And as the family structure becomes more common, we need a word
for it. And the word, the name for it has really taken off,
and we've we've added it to our dictionary grandfamily dictionary dot com. We're
talking to John Kelly, he is one of the editors there, and they've
updated their words for is this for twenty twenty four or twenty twenty three well,
we do update. We're constantly updating the dictionary. Two kind of two
main announcements during the year. One you know, winter spring, and we
do one around this time of the year chilling off. You know, language
change, you know centner of you know some of the harder topics, you
know some of those complexities I mentioned before, as well as some of the
brighter topics, the more fun topics that that can bring us together. I
have a I have a fun example for you, Lee, since you mentioned
you really love kind of obscure, difficult words. You want one, Okay,
I'll do my best. All right, here's here's one for you.
Mount weasel. Do you want to guess what a mount weasel is? I'm
guessing it was a Victorian term for something. But that's a really good guest.
It's a really good gath And in a way I'm gonna say, you're
not entirely wrong, but this is some insider baseball words for you. A
mount weasel is a decoy entry that is kind of an intentionally made up word
that goes into a dictionary or encyclopedia that is put there to make sure that
other people aren't copying the dictionary. So it's suddenly if it goes to market
and you see they have this word, it kind of helps us protect rip
and it comes from, you know, the nineteen seventies. There was an
addition of the New Columbia Encyclopedia and they included what is considered to be one
of the first Mount Weasels, and they put an entry that was Lillian Virginia
Mount Weasels. Kind of sounds Victorian to me. Yeah, And in their
entry, this character supposedly died on assignment while covering an explosion for the Fictitious
Combustibles magazine. So this is a fun word that's really kind of a sneaks
peak behind. You know, how dictionaries get made, and they do at
dictionary dot com with the help of John Kelly the three thousand new, updated
and revised words for this online dictionary, including words like information, pollution,
John NEPO baby. What is a nepo baby? Anipo baby or nepo baby
refers to a celebrity who's famous and successful. It's they're they're perceived to be
famous, largely because their their parents were famous. So there's something that kind
of spread on social media, poking fun at you know, some figures in
Hollywood. It's not a calling out, well you're you know, you're doing
great, but are you benefitting from your parents post coteilsnipo or the nepo n
epo that's short for nepotism, a favoritism, you know, like in a
business to your family. So you hire your nephew because he's your nephew,
not because your nephew stood out among all the app applicants. So that's a
nepo baby. A malga gender, how does that differ from cis gender?
Amalga gender is a word that is referring to a person whose gender identity is
sort of an amalgamation of how they experienced themselves gender wise, as being intersex,
as being intersex. Gender and identity can be a challenging area of language
change, but there's no doubt that it's a very dynamic area of language change.
And in the past ten fifteen years we have seen objectively as a dictionary
a lot of new terms originating to give name to new ranges of experience.
A malda gender, you know, a person whose gender identity is connected to
the fact that they are intersex, is one of those terms, and it
along with three thousand other new terms are out now on the dictionary dot Com.
That's where I go whenever I'm reading a book and see a new word
that I didn't know or thought I knew the meaning of and looked it up.
And if you're like me, you'll probably look these up and then you'll
be able to see when people are misusing them. Well, let's all keep
practicing yolo vocal floats. Sure, it's a challenging word to say, it's
a fun it's a fun word to say, and it's a wonderful addition to
our vocabularies. And John Kelly, thank you for bringing it to us from
dictionary dot com. We'll be looking up these words and I thank you for
joining us. Thank you so much. Thanks for listening to Later with Lee
Matthews the Lee Matthews Podcast, and remember to listen to The Drive Live weekday
afternoons from five to seven and Ihearts Media Presentation