Funny thing, dictionaries. And funniest among them probably is the Oxford English Dictionary. In its self-described task of sanctifying words and granting them official entry into the English language, the OED is a bit behind the curve as well as self-righteous. Consider a few of the latest entries in the December 2023 edition: wokery, safe word, screen-share, generative artificial intelligence, and swear box. We all know that these words have been around, some longer than others. Take ‘safe word’, a term for a word chosen by practitioners of sex – especially of the BDSM variety – as a mutually agreed upon signal to stop. We knew that. Same goes with ‘screen-share’, the activity of sharing one’s computer screen with someone else’s device. The ‘swear box’ has been there for a $@ing long time. And ‘generative AI’ is so ubiquitously known – and used – that calling it a new entry sounds like the sort of mistake ChatGPT would make during one of its hallucinations.
And, yet, there it stands – OED – probably with an MBE pinned to its cover, overseeing the christening ceremony of these words. Obviously, the words themselves don’t much care, and probably shrug and try to figure out whether getting into OED will get them a free slice of pizza or not. But, for the rest of us, such old ‘wokery’ elicits an eye-roll, a word OED introduced only in 2014.
