Bromance, crowdsourcing enter dictionary

CONCERNS over climate change and financial matters have become sufficiently widespread to take words and phrases associated with them into the latest edition of a major dictionary.

Many new terms in The Chambers Dictionary come from worries about today’s world.

On the environment, people keep an anxious eye on “season creep” — the observed changes in the timing of the seasons, especially earlier indications of spring.

And to try to stop it happening, they don’t just recycle, but also “upcycle” (turn waste products into higher-value products) and “precycle” (reduce waste by avoiding buying products with a lot of packaging).

The recession, having hit retail banks (and savers’ accounts), has also had an impact on the edition. Terms such as “toxic assets”, “double-dip” and “overleveraged” (having borrowed too much money and being unable to pay it back) have all entered the book.

Hundreds of words have been added to the forthcoming edition. Nearly one quarter of them derive from internet culture.

So we see “minisode”, a heavily abridged version of a TV show, especially broadcast online, and “crowdsourcing”, which reflects the internet’s power to reach large numbers of people at the click of a mouse.

The dictionary features more than 620,000 words, phrases and definitions. It offers some witty definitions, for example “man flu” (facetious) — a heavy cold (from the idea that men tend to exaggerate the seriousness of the condition).

Merriam-Webster has also added dozens of entries to the latest edition of its Collegiate Dictionary. Here are some:

* Americana: Genre of American music with roots in early folk and country.

* Boomerang child: Young adult who returns to live at the family home, especially for financial reasons.

* Bromance: a close nonsexual friendship between men.

* Continuous positive airway pressure: abbreviated CPAP; a technique for relieving breathing problems (such as those associated with sleep apnea or congestive heart failure) by pumping a steady flow of air through the nose to prevent the narrowing or collapse of air passages or to help the lungs to expand.

* Cougar: Slang term for a middle-aged woman seeking a romantic relationship with a younger man.

* Crowdsourcing: Obtaining needed services, ideas or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people, especially from the online community, rather than from traditional employees or suppliers.

* Duathlon: A three-part long-distance race typically having a running phase, a bicycling phase and a final running phase.

* Fist bump: A gesture in which two people bump their fists together, as in greeting or celebration.

* Helicopter parent: A parent who is overly involved in the life of his or her child.

* M-commerce: Business conducted by using a mobile electronic device, such as a phone.

* Parkour: the sport of traversing environmental obstacles by running, climbing or leaping rapidly and efficiently.

* Robocall: a phonecall from an automated source that delivers a pre-recorded message to many people.

* Social media: Forms of electronic communication, such as websites for social networking and microblogging, through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal message and other content such as videos.

* Tweet: a post made on Twitter.