Avo, bougie and rando: the new words for 2018

Do you get hangry without your morning avo?

These are among more than 800 words added to the Merriam-Webster dictionary this year. Many are abbreviations, like “adorbs”, or portmanteaus, such as “mocktail”, a non-alcoholic cocktail.

It is not all lighthearted. Words like “food bank” and “tent city” reflect social problems with poverty and the migrant crisis, while “biohacking” looks towards a future of advanced technology.

Some are barely recognisable as words at all. “TL;DR”, meaning “too long; didn’t read”, is used on the internet to summarise the key points of a longer article.

Compared with other languages, English is vast and flexible because it has interacted with many cultures over the centuries. English was entirely Germanic until 1066, when William the Conqueror brought French to the British Isles and, with it, thousands of words derived from Latin.

This has often left English with multiple ways of conveying one meaning. “Grow” comes from the old Germanic, “increase” from Old French, and “augment” from Latin.

The inventiveness of a few individuals has also played a part. Words coined by Shakespeare include “lonely”, “assassination” and “addiction”. Chaucer, whose writings include the first uses of 2,000 words, invented “twitter” for birdsong 700 years before it would inspire the name of the social network.

Sometimes, the meaning of words changes organically over time. In contrast to now, in the 1700s “cute” meant shrewd or cunning.

Not all languages are so flexible. For centuries, France has imposed strict rules to standardise its language and unite the nation. Agencies nicknamed the “language police” battle to stop the spread of Anglicisms and maintain uniformity.

Nevertheless, some changes to English have proved controversial. In 2013, the definition of “literally” was changed to include when “something is not literally true but is used for emphasis”, which essentially gave the word two opposing meanings.

Two years later, Oxford Dictionaries named the “tears of joy” emoji its word of the year.

Is English getting out of hand?

Pass the guac

Absolutely, say some. Rather than being inventive, these “new” words reveal a culture that is becoming lazy, shallow and facile. We’re losing the wonderful complexity of language. Can we seriously compare Shakespeare’s “incarnadine” to taking a few letters off the end of “guacamole”? Soon we’ll all be writing in emojis.

Language is a living thing that is constantly evolving, reply others. Internet and texting culture is just the latest in a long line of social revolutions that have forever marked the way we communicate. We live in an exciting time that is pushing the boundaries of what language can do. Resisting change is a losing battle.