The Oxford Dictionary word of the year for 2014 is vape. I can get behind that. It's a word that describes something a lot of people are doing and it really did come of age in the last 12 months. The American Dialect Society, not so much. Their controversial word of the year is #blacklivesmatter, which is not a word or even close to being one word.
I suppose the argument is that digital speech changes everything and that today's non-standard use is tomorrow's canonical word. But, beware of fads. A few years ago, some of these groups fawned over truthiness but the reality is that people not named Stephen Colbert don't really have that word in their toolkit.
Also on the agenda, the physics of deflated footballs and speaking of Colbert, the debut of his successor, Larry Wilmorelast night.
GUESTS:
- Peter Sokolowski - Editor-at-Large at Merriam-Webster. He blogs at Merriam-Webster Unabridged, appears inAsk the Editorvideos at Merriam-Webster.com, and was named among TIME magazine's 140 Best Twitter Feeds of 2013.
- Jessica Bennett - Freelance journalist and columnist for Time magazine and contributor to the New York Times
- Ainissa Ramirez - Science evangelist and co-author of Newton’s Football: The Science Behind America’s Game
- Eric Deggans - Television critic for NPR
SONGS:
- “One Hippopotami”by Allan Sherman
- “NFL Theme Remix” by monkeykeiths
- “I Should Watch TV” by David Byrne & St. Vincent
