'Meh' makes Collins English Dictionary
Whatever
Customer Success Testimonial: Recovery is Everything
The interjection "meh" has beaten "frenemy", "huggles" and "jargonaut" for inclusion in the 30th anniversary edition of the Collins English Dictionary following an invitation to the unwashed masses to submit neologisms reflecting the current state of play with our beloved mother lingo.
According to the Times, meh was chosen by a panel of judges in the "Word of Mouth" campaign "because of its frequent use today". It was suggested by Erin Whyte of Nottingham, who described it as “an expression of utter boredom or an indication of how little you care for an idea”.The dictionary will define the word as "an interjection to suggest indifference or boredom - or as an adjective to say something is mediocre or a person is unimpressed".
Cormac McKeown, Collins Dictionaries head of content, said: “This is a new interjection from the US that seems to have inveigled its way into common speech over here. It was actually spelt out in The Simpsons, when Homer is trying to prise the kids away from the TV with a suggestion for a day trip. They both just reply ‘meh’ and keep watching TV; he asks again and Lisa says, ‘We said MEH! - MEH, meh!’"
The rise of meh is apparently a sign of how email and the interwebs are "creating language". McKeown explained: “Internet and email are playing a big part in formalising the spellings of vocal interjections like these. Other examples would be hmm and heh, which are both now ubiquitous online and in emails. People are increasingly writing in a register somewhere in between spoken and written English.”
Regular readers will recall that "pod slurping" was crowned Oz word of the year 2007, while "wiki" last year poked its ugly face into the online edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. Whatever. ®
COMMENTS
meh?
OFFS, by the same argument, should also be included. But I do protest, doth the man protest too much? Meethinks not. An article with no Paris Hilton is bad enough, No IT theme (unless we are to consider the bullsh.. that the Collins Dictionary appears to be desperate to emulate) normally attracts words of derision... but no PH, no IT and no fekkin IQ either? Must be a recession in the media too.
"Al hiv an ingin in an ah", as every Dundonian knows, is lunch.
CED have offically added Meh to our linguistic lexicon
May I be the first to offer my sincerest pericombobulations?
----------------------------------
Mine's the one with "The Whole Rotten Saga" in the pocket
dictionaries...
...are descriptive, not prescriptive. So long as they document where they got the usage from, and date its first known use, then they're doing what they were meant to do.
If you want historical usage, then get a historical usage dictionary. Dictionaries of contemporary language need to keep up with what is actually contemporary. "meh" seems to fit that definition.
Requirements Checklist for Choosing a Cloud Backup and Recovery Service Provider
Cloud based data management
Agentless Backup is Not a Myth
SaaS data loss: The problem you didn’t know you had
What you need to know about cloud backup
