I’d love to see all the words that have origins in the 20th century. All the entries would be sorted by year. Random House’s little online section is cute, New Words: Sixty years of new words. It lists a handful of new words by decade. But that isn’t enough! I want all the new words by year! Etymology geeks unite!
In case yer curious, here’s their list:
1940s: A-bomb, bikini, cheeseburger, cybernetics, displaced person, fax, goofball, laycee, jet plane, long-playing, quiz show, snorkel, spaceship, tape recorder, test-drive, TV
1950s: aerospace, beatnik, Bermuda shorts, computerize, data processing, desegregate, geodesic dome, hash browns, junk mail, neutron bomb, poliovirus, skydiving, weirdo
1960s: cable television, counterculture, crib death, doofus, genetic code, hippie, instant replay, jet lag, macrobiotics, megabyte, pantsuit, peacenik, sitcom, sexism, space shuttle, trendy
1970s: chairperson, consciousness-raising, detox, diskette, gas-guzzler, imfomercial, in vitro fertilization, leg warmer, passive smoking, personal computer, punk rock, Silicon Valley, space cadet, trail mix, video game, X-rated.
1980s: automated-teller machine (ATM), compact disc, designer drug, desktop publishing, emoticon, glass ceiling, in-line skate, mall rat, managed care, microbrewery, palmtop, sandwich generation, Twelve Step, virtual reality
1990s: bad hair day, buffalo wing, carjacking, designated driver, flexdollars, granny dumping, intranet, McJob, mehndi, nanotube, personal trainer, roofie, scrunchy, superchurch, V-chip, Website
Not to rail on their list. It’s very cute and trendy. But the words are just too ummm, obvious for their time period. I want an etymology list of words from the 20th century that are shocking. Like “update” being from 1948. THAT JUST BLOWS MY MIND.
Now there is a book called, “Fifty Years among the New Words: A Dictionary of Neologisms 1941-1991“
While I love neologisms, they tend to capture new concepts (which are fantastic), but it would be really nice to have a book of common non-trendy words coined between 1900-2000.
(Disclaimer: The Amazon links in this blog post are affiliate links, so I can make a few extra coins to help pay for a fraction of the cost to host this website. #CommissionsEarned)
Basically, I’d love to see a list of words that surprise you that they were made in the 20th century. Most of the words in Random House’s “New Words: Sixty years of new words” are very obvious that they came from the 20th century.
glass ceiling? Maybe the definition we’re most familiar with was first associated with it in the 80’s but I bet there were people that had physical “glass ceilings” in their homes/businesses for some reason. I don’t like their list.
I see what you’re saying by them being pretty obvious. But I also think it’s pretty interesting how those words can sum up that decade. Detox was first coined in the coke-ridden 70s; ATM in the “excess generation” of the 80s.
I am curious what exactly a ” Granny Dumper ” is. Would that be an instance where you do not in fact LIKE your grandma and want to dump her for a better one? Or do I just not want to know….
Etymologies are not definitions; they’re explanations of what our words meant 600 or 2,000 years ago. Think of it like looking at pictures of your friends’ parents when they were your age.
It’s funny how “bad hair day” took until the 90s to be coined. Certainly they used that phrase before. Or maybe not.
There was certainly enough bad hair in the 80s to make that phrase come up.
bogga bogga
ummm my teacher is havin us do a reasearch project blah blah blah grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
pootan spalonky