The Core Knowledge Blog

A dictionary, a high school English teacher used to remind me, is not a rule book but a history book.  It provides a record of how the language changes and grows.  The editors of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary have added 100 new words to their latest edition that have found their way into general usage, including edamame, wing nut, dirty bomb and pescatarian — a vegetarian who eats fish. 

“As soon as we see the word used without explanation or translation or gloss, we consider it a naturalized citizen of the English language,” Peter Sokolowski, an editor-at-large for Merriam-Webster, tells the AP. “If somebody is using it to convey a specific idea and that idea is successfully conveyed in that word, it’s ready to go in the dictionary.”

The most interesting neologism: “mondegreen.”  It describes “words mistaken for other words.”  A mondegreen most often comes from misunderstood phrases or lyrics, such as “Jose, can you see” for the opening line of the Star Spangled Banner.  Mondegreen was coined by a writer for The Atlantic over 50 years ago, who confused the lyric of a Scottish ballad with the lyric “laid him on the green” with “Lady Mondegreen.”

Among the best-known modern examples: “There’s a bathroom on the right” in place of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “There’s a bad moon on the rise” and “‘Scuse me, while I kiss this guy” in place of “kiss the sky” in the 1967 Jimi Hendrix classic “Purple Haze.”

Merriam-Webster is inviting people to post their favorite mondegreens on their web site