What Words Were Invented The Year You Were Born?

What Words Were Invented The Year You Were Born?

As far as humans are concerned, the world didn’t exist until, well, they existed. That means anything that happened before you were born is mere fairy tales and make believe conversation. But what about those words that filled those tales and conversations? When did they start existing? When were those words born? Well, the Oxford English Dictionaries is here to tell you what words were born the year you were born.

The Oxford English Dictionaries took a look at all the words in their pages to find when certain words popped up for the very first time. They’ve covered 1900 to 2004 and plucked out one word for each year. Here are a few select words from certain years:

1945 — mobile phone

1948 — TV

1950 — big bang

1951 — blast off

1953 — frenemy

1955 — artificial intelligence

1958 — photo call

1970 — laugh out loud

1971 — reboot

1974 — Internet

1977 — nip and tuck

1978 — gazillion

1980 — foodie

1981 — chill pill

1982 — downloadable

1983 — air guitar

1984 — shopaholic

1986 — channel surf

1987 — bazillionaire

1988 — beatbox

1990 — emoticon

1991 — nu skool

1993 — geeksville

1999 — hacktivism

2004 — podcast

That doesn’t mean those were the only words invented, the OED shows that smartphone and text messaging and app were invented in the 1980’s but doesn’t attribute a single year to them. Still, it’s fun to see when the words we use today were born. You can use the OED’s tool here to find out what word matches your birth year. Let us know below.

Image from AP


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