The Oxford Dictionaries 2014 Word Of The Year Is ‘Vape’

The Oxford Dictionaries 2014 Word Of The Year Is ‘Vape’

The Oxford Dictionaries 2014 word of the year has arrived. And that word is… vape. As in “I vape so hard I grew a robot lung, bro.”

Oxford Dictionaries Online (not to be confused with the Oxford English Dictionary) chooses a word each year, providing blogs such as this one with plenty of things to wring our hands about. The entire hand-wringing industry would really be nowhere without these little nuggets of tech-speak ostensibly “celebrated” to antagonise the olds.

Take a quick look at past words like selfie (2013) or GIF (2012) and you’ll find plenty for old people to be irrationally upset about. I mean really — kids and their silly words these days!

“It’s hard to anticipate what’s going to capture the public imagination at any given moment,” Casper Grathwohl, president of Oxford dictionaries, told Time magazine in a baldfaced lie. “Vape only really caught on a few years ago and now we’ve seen a dramatic rise.”

A dramatic rise indeed. What words did vape beat out? Normcore, bae and slacktivism. The shortlist appears below.

bae n. used as a term of endearment for one’s romantic partner.

budtender n. a person whose job is to serve customers in a cannabis dispensary or shop.

contactless adj. relating to or involving technologies that allow a smart card, mobile phone, etc. to contact wirelessly to an electronic reader, typically in order to make a payment.

indyref, n. an abbreviation of ‘independence referendum’, in reference to the referendum on Scottish independence, held in Scotland on 18 September 2014, in which voters were asked to answer yes or no to the question ‘Should Scotland be an independent country?’

normcore n. a trend in which ordinary, unfashionable clothing is worn as a deliberate fashion statement.

slacktivism, n., informal actions performed via the Internet in support of a political or social cause but regarded as requiring little time or involvement, e.g. signing an online petition or joining a campaign group on a social media website; a blend of slacker and activism.

Better luck next year, indyref. Or not. As an American I have no idea what they’re talking about.

Picture: A vape enthusiast via Getty

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