For those who dream of a four-day workweek, Dictionary.com feels your pain. And to give you the language to express your woes, it’s added a slew of work related terms — plus a few internet faves, climate terms, and accurate Ukrainian endonyms.
On Tuesday, the online dictionary announced 620 new entries, 700 new definitions for existing entries, and 3,100 revised definitions in its Fall 2022 update. The new additions were broken into several categories, led off with “Work and Antiwork.” Funnily, almost every word in this category encourages you to not actually work. Hey, even the dictionary needs a break, OK?
“Antiwork” itself was a new term, defined as “of or relating to a social and cultural movement that distinguishes between labor, which generates goods, and work, which generates wealth, and that rejects work as artificially incentivized, while embracing or elevating labor as essential or intrinsically rewarding.” Other new terms that could be used to support or educate about the growing antiwork movement included “golden handcuffs,” “OOO,” “churn rate,” and “pawternity leave.”
The dictionary also added several updates to its endonyms section pertaining to Ukraine, in which place names’ proper spellings and pronunciations as preferred by Ukrainians are reflected, as opposed to those popularized by Russia. This move comes after the public became more largely aware of the preferred spelling and pronunciation of Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, earlier this year.
And in catching up with the rest of the internet, Dictionary.com also finally added the term “simp,” officially defining it as “a person, especially a man, who is excessively attentive or submissive to an object of sexual attraction.” While the term has been largely used on the internet in recent years, the editors make sure to note that like most internet slang, the word “simp” draws its roots from Black culture and 1980s hip-hop. Though it may be a little slow on the slang, the dictionary does give credit where credit is due.
