BOSTON: Get swole, prepare a bug-out bag, grab a go-cup and maybe you’ll have a better chance of surviving the omnicide.
Translation: Hit the gym and bulk up, put a bunch of stuff essential for survival in an easy-to-carry bag, grab a drink for the road, and perhaps you’ll live through a man-made disaster that could wipe out the human race.
Swole, bug-out bag, go-cup and omnicide are just a few of the 640 additions to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary added Monday.
Deciding what gets included is a painstaking process involving the Springfield, Massachusetts-based company’s roughly two dozen lexicographers, said Peter Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster’s editor at large.
They scan online versions of newspapers, magazines, academic journals, books and even movie and television scripts until they detect what he calls “a critical mass” of usage that warrants inclusion.
The words are added to the online dictionary first, before some are later added to print updates of the company’s popular Collegiate Dictionary, which according to company spokeswoman Meghan Lunghi, has sold more than 50 million copies since 1898, making it the “best-selling hardcover book after the Bible.”
“So many people use our website as their principal dictionary and we want it to be current,” Sokolowski said. “We want to be as useful as possible.”
The latest additions include mostly new words, or phrases, but also some old words with new meanings or applications.
Take unplug and snowflake, for example. Unplug means to literally tug an electric plug from a wall socket, but now, it also has a more metaphorical meaning, as in to disconnect from social media, he said.
And yes, a snowflake is still a beautiful ice crystal that floats from the sky during winter, but it now also has a usually disparaging meaning of “someone who is overly sensitive,” according to Merriam-Webster’s definition.
Some of the words have been around for decades, but are included in the dictionary because of increased usage.
Omnicide, which means “the destruction of all life,” dates to the Cold War and was used in reference to the threat of nuclear annihilation, but lately it has been used to define the risk of other man-made disasters, primarily climate change.
Popular culture — movies, TV and sports — is a common source of new words, such as buzzy, an adjective that literally means creating a buzz, such as a “buzzy new movie.”
And then there’s EGOT, a noun that refers to an entertainer who has won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony. Audrey Hepburn, Marvin Hamlisch, Mel Brooks and Whoopi Goldberg are among the elite group.
Garbage time, those painful final minutes of a game when one team has an insurmountable lead and both teams empty their benches, has been around since 1960, but is on the latest list of new words.
With the rapid advance of science, many new words come from the fields of technology and medicine.
In the Internet age when it’s sometimes difficult to determine whether the vast amounts of information we’re exposed to is accurate, the dictionary is a rock, Sokolowski said.
“We need the dictionary more than ever now that we have information flying at us from all directions,” he said.
Get swole: Merriam-Webster dictionary bulks up with new entries
Get swole: Merriam-Webster dictionary bulks up with new entries
Some Warren Buffett wisdom on his last day leading Berkshire Hathaway
OMAHA, Nebraska: The advice that legendary investor Warren Buffett offered on investing and life over the years helped earn him legions of followers who eagerly read his annual letters and filled an arena in Omaha every year to listen to him at Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meetings.
Buffett’s last day as CEO is Wednesday after six decades of building up the Berkshire conglomerate. He’ll remain chairman, but Greg Abel will take over leadership.
Here’s a collection of some of Buffett’s most famous quotes from over the years:
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“Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.”
That’s how Buffett summed up his investing approach of buying out-of-favor stocks and companies when they were selling for less than he estimated they were worth.
He also urged investors to stick with industries they understand that fall within their “circle of competence” and offered this classic maxim: “Rule No. 1: Never lose money. Rule No. 2: Never forget Rule No. 1.”
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“After they first obey all rules, I then want employees to ask themselves whether they are willing to have any contemplated act appear the next day on the front page of their local paper to be read by their spouses, children and friends with the reporting done by an informed and critical reporter.
“If they follow this test, they need not fear my other message to them: Lose money for the firm and I will be understanding; lose a shred of reputation for the firm and I will be ruthless.”
That’s the ethical standard Buffett explained to a Congressional committee in 1991 that he would apply as he cleaned up the Wall Street investment firm Salomon Brothers. He has reiterated the newspaper test many times since over the years.
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“You only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out.”
Many companies might do well when times are good and the economy is growing, but Buffett told investors that a crisis always reveals whether businesses are making sound decisions.
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“Who you associate with is just enormously important. Don’t expect that you’ll make every decision right on that. But you are going to have your life progress in the general direction of the people you work with, that you admire, that become your friends.”
Buffett always told young people that they should try to hang out with people who they feel are better than them because that will help improve their lives. He said that’s especially true when choosing a spouse, which might be the most important decision in life.
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“Our unwavering conclusion: never bet against America.”
Buffett has always remained steadfast in his belief in the American capitalist system. He wrote in 2021 that “there has been no incubator for unleashing human potential like America. Despite some severe interruptions, our country’s economic progress has been breathtaking.”
