Word Up: Geocaching Added To Dictionary

Good news, geocachers … No longer will you record a DNF when looking up your favourite word in the dictionary.

Today, Merriam-Webster announced the newest terms to be added to its mainstream Collegiate Dictionary, with geocaching debuting alongside phrases such as sexting, flexitarian, mash-up, obesogenic, energy drink and life coach.

Each year the Springfield, Massachusetts-based company picks about 100 additions with which to update the print edition of its 114-year-old dictionary, gathering evidence of their usage over several years in everything from media to beer bottle labels and boxes of frozen food.

From those additions, Merriam-Webster then picks its top 25 newcomers, of which geocaching is one. Also on the 2012 list, according to company president John Morse, are: Oprah’s ‘aha moment’, bucket list, craft beer, copernicium, the Stephen King-inspired earworm for a song you can’t get out of your head, e-reader, game changer, a new definition for “gassed” as slang for drained of energy, F-bomb, gastropub, man cave, shovel-ready (a construction site ready for work) and tipping point.

Merriam-Webster says the new 21st-century terms offer a revealing look at American culture and the phrases English speakers adopt to describe it. “Some of the new words this year provide colourful images,” editor-at-large Peter Sokolowski said in a statement online. “Terms like ‘man cave,’ ‘underwater’ (when used to describe mortgages), ‘earworm,’ and ‘bucket list’ paint vivid pictures in your mind. They show that English-speakers can be very creative as they describe the world around them.”

According to the company, geocaching is a noun hailing from the year 2000 which denotes “a game in which players are given the geographical co-ordinates of a cache of items which they search for with a GPS device”.

*How would you define geocaching? And what other geo-terms would you like to see incorporated into mainstream dictionaries? Tell us below …