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CNN Live Saturday
Dictionary Adds Interesting Words
Aired September 01, 2001 - 09:49 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Do you know what a hottie is?
MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN ANCHOR: I do.
PHILLIPS: I know, your wife. If you do, you're on the bleeding edge. If not, check in your Webster's dictionary.
SAVIDGE: It is that time of year again. Yes, you know exactly what time. Webster's has added new words to the dictionary. Let's see how those words are chosen and what some of the new words are.
Joining us now from New York is Wendalyn Nichols, the editorial director for Random House Reference, which is published, and publishes the Random House College Dictionary 2001. Good morning to you.
WENDALYN NICHOLS, RANDOM HOUSE REFERENCE: Good morning.
SAVIDGE: Well, let me start off by asking you, how many -- not so much how many definitions do we have here, but -- because there are quite a few -- how do you come up with the new words?
NICHOLS: Well, we usually have a short list of about 1,000 words that we look at over the course of the year, and we shorten that to maybe 500, 300, and then start discussing what the evidence is for the words across a wide range of language, and come up with our list every year.
PHILLIPS: Are there ever big debates, Wendalyn, about this evidence?
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIPS: Yes, because I would think some people have a different approach on certain words.
NICHOLS: I think there are debates, but we really try to let the evidence speak for itself. I remember a debate once about "power bar," that one of the editors was claiming that this was becoming generic for an energy bar. And I said to him, "Go back and look at the evidence." And it turned out that really "energy bar" was the word to put in.
SAVIDGE: Well, let's start talking and showing some of the words that we are talking about that you are writing about. "B2B," that one goes in there, business to business...
NICHOLS: Business to business, that's right. Yes, a lot of what we find is that acronyms are a really big story with new words, and it really is the case every year. We get HDTP, which you mentioned earlier, which is a handheld device transfer protocol. You get a lot of things coming in from technology, and also, as we can see, from business intercommunications.
PHILLIPS: All right, here's another one, "hottie."
NICHOLS: Well, isn't that a fun one? That's one that just sort of sprang up. Yes, it's what "fox" was when I was a teenager...
PHILLIPS: Exactly.
NICHOLS: ... it could be a man, it can be a woman.
PHILLIPS: Hot stuff.
NICHOLS: Immediately people -- yes, they know exactly what it means, yes.
PHILLIPS: Well, now, when you mention that, what kind of evidence did you have to find or discover for this word to be in the dictionary?
NICHOLS: Well, what we're looking for is, it isn't just teenagers for a word like this, especially with slang. You have to be careful that people of many different generations understand what it means, that they're happy to use it, that it's occurring outside of just two magazines, for instance.
I was sitting in the nail salon yesterday reading "Cosmopolitan," which albeit is not high literature but, you know, it's really great salon reading. And it was in there, talking about a movie star, who will remain nameless.
SAVIDGE: Well, how about another one, "bleeding edge"?
NICHOLS: Yes. This one, to me, is really fascinating, because we always are trying to find the next way to say something is he ultimate. first it was "avant-garde," then it was "cutting edge," now it -- that cut has to cause some bleeding. It's kind of a nasty image.
SAVIDGE: Well, I...
NICHOLS: But it's out there and used a lot.
PHILLIPS: All right, we got another one, "big box."
NICHOLS: "Big box," we know all about this. This is the big story in retailing. This is your Target, this is your K-Mart, your Wal-Mart. All of us with our sudden price-conscious shopping has turned to these discount large space retailers that really take up a lot of space, hence the big box, as opposed to some of the more traditional places that we've been shopping.
SAVIDGE: Well, Wendalyn, we can't tell you have you've just enlightened our lives this morning, and not to mention added to our vocabularies.
NICHOLS: Well, it's a pleasure to do so.
SAVIDGE: Thanks to Random House, and thanks to your presence. Thank you very much for being here.
PHILLIPS: Thanks, Wendalyn.
NICHOLS: Thank you.
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