Wassup? It's official

Well, wassup has officially entered the latest edition of the Oxford Dictionary, says an article that describes some of the newest words the dictionary contains. It already has 600,000 words in it - is there really room for more? Well, FYI and LOL, most commonly used in text language, have now found their way into the dictionary.

'English is universally considered to be the richest spoken language in terms of number of words.' And I learnt that acronyms - where you have letters that stand for something like MAF (Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries) and scuba (self-contained underwater breathing apparatus) are only acronyms if they are actually pronounced as a word rather than just the letters. So NCEA (our exam/qualification system in schools) is NOT considered an acronym.

blended words

I was listening to the news the other day, and the announcer was talking about two countries and said they were frenemies. This was the first time I'd heard this blended word and it made me think about some of the other words that have been created out of two separate words. Most of you are probably familiar with brunch - a combination of breakfast and lunch. But have you heard of...

smog - a mix of smoke and fog
spork - a spoon-shaped fork
sitcom - a situation comedy
camcorder - a camera that records video
motel - a hotel for people that drive motors (cars)

Perhaps you could make up some of your own, and add them here by commenting on the post!