New Words 牛津新詞語

By Nkem Ifejika

媒體英語會帶大家一起學習BBC撰稿人在報道世界大事時常用到的單詞和短語。

國際潮流和重大事態直接影響語言的發展，比如在國內度假 (staycation) 和嗚嗚祖拉 vuvuzela 就是其中的兩個例子。最新版的牛津英語字典中就增加了2000個時髦詞語。

The new words which have been added to the Oxford Dictionary of English all reflect global trends and events.

From the World Cup, in South Africa, who could forget the piercing monotone of the "vuvuzela".

Due to the credit crunch, people are forced to take holidays at home, so instead of a vacation in which you vacate the country, you stay, hence "staycation".

A close but non-sexual relationship between two men is a "bromance" - a portmanteau word, from "brother" and "romance". An example of this sort of relationship could be that between the leaders of Britain's coalition government, David Cameron and Nick Clegg. Oh, they could also be "frenemies" - friends who are also rivals.

Sara Hawker is one of the editors of the Oxford Dictionary of English. She says a lot of work goes into deciding which words should be added.

"The words we include in our dictionary are all based on evidence.We have enormous databases of current English which we analyse and we only put words into the dictionary if we've got significant evidence that they are being used by different people in different contexts, so we never put anything in unless there is a lot of evidence of it being used."

Other words which are now also included are "chillax", an amalgamation of chill and relax, so calm down. And "buzzkill", something or someone with a dispiriting effect. Basically, they or it, kill your buzz.

But of course Twitter and Facebook have brought about "social media", and with it "tweet up", a meeting organised via Twitter. If the coalition between David Cameron and Nick Clegg broke down, they might go into their Facebook accounts and "defriend" each other.