These are new words or phrases that have caught my eye. My definition of a new word is one which is not in the Macquarie Dictionary online.
Some words seem to have more significance than others in terms of reflecting changes in the Australian culture, so I will give each word a Zeitgeist rating (ZG) within a range of 1-10.
If you disagree with the rating that I give, please argue your case in the comment field provided.
I would love you to contact me if you have made any new word discoveries of your own.
The expression to throw shade at someone, meaning to be scornful or disrespectful towards someone, dates back to American college slang of the 1990s.
ZG: 6
The fact that the row within the Royal Family made news around the world has helped to spread this little bit of American slang.
Read MoreThis is a gesture in which the thumb and index finger make a circle and the other three fingers are stretched out straight. White supremacists took control of the sign by inventing a different significance for it.
ZG: 8
Given the rise of the white supremacy movement, we are , sadly, likely to continue to encounter this sign.
Read MoreThese are the volunteer firefighters who work alongside the Royal Fire Service. In some parts of the country they are called the Black Ops Brigade.
ZG: 5
Probably a passing phenomenon of the recent bushfires but who knows, next summer may bring them out again.
Read MoreA zoomer is a member of Generation Z, born in the early 2000s and characterised as having great facility with digital technology and great social skills.
ZG: 6
Probably OK boomer! produced the greatest media buzz. This retort, coming somewhat late in the day, doesn’t seem to have the same bite.
Read MoreThis is the justice that is sought for those affected by climate change, such as climate migrants. This is to be achieved by developing climate law, which currently does not deal with many of the situations arising from the changing environment.
ZG: 7
The efforts to bring the notion of climate justice to the attention of the world will undoubtedly increase the currency of the term.
Read MoreThis is sometimes referred to as the silent forest syndrome and is the result of unchecked animal poaching which has emptied the forest of all wildlife so that it becomes eerily silent.
ZG: 7
Silent forests must be one of the saddest manifestations of environmental vandalism.
Read MoreThis is a subset of dark tourism, that is, tourism to places where atrocities have occurred. The disaster tourist seeks places where man-made or natural disasters have occurred.
ZG: 6
There has been only too much opportunity for disaster tourists in Australia in the last six months.
Read MoreWe have been given another way of looking at water by labelling it functional water. This is water which is enhanced in some way to derive a specific benefit.
ZG: 4
A term which appeals to marketing people no doubt but which we can only hope will remain submerged in jargon as far as the average thirsty person is concerned.
Read MoreThe environment does not intentionally persecute people. So people fleeing the consequences of climate change should be referred to as climate migrants.
ZG: 9
Whether they are called refugees or migrants is immaterial to the people whose lives are being destroyed by climate change.
Read MoreThis is the paid leave that you can have from work to settle in a new puppy into your household.
ZG: 4
It made sense for a pet food company to offer this to their employees. Some companies in Australia have picked up on the idea but I am not sure how far it will go.
Read MoreThis is the group of people who operate in a black market for the kind of sand used in making concrete. Not all sand will do, which makes the right kind of sand precious.
ZG: 5
An interesting contemporary addition to the mafia set.
Read MoreThis is the short form of pyrocumulonimbus. It is one of the many names given what we would commonly call a firestorm, that is, a weather event created by a huge and intense bushfire.
ZG: 6
A technical term but one which, in its shortened form, may well become more familiar to us in future bushfire seasons.
Read MoreThis is a slow motion selfie taken on an Apple iphone 11 which features a front-facing selfie cam.
ZG: 3
Probably ephemeral. The word has been trademarked by Apple so whether it will escape into general use remains to be seen.
Read MoreBush kinder is an early education program which has gained strength in the last few years as a way of broadening the horizons of small children by immersing them in a natural environment.
ZG: 6
It is interesting the way in which we now have to strain to provide what used to come naturally to children. We have to provide an experience of the natural world, carefully organise unstructured play, be daring enough to allow children to take risks.
Read MoreThis type of facemask is also known, more correctly, as a P2 respirator and is able to filter out fine particles from the air. Initially the demand in Australia was for protection against bushfire smoke but then it became part of the protective gear against the spread of the Covid-19 virus.
ZG 8
This is just a product, a device, and so is less interesting than other new words with more cultural significance, and yet it seems to have become a symbol for both the bushfires and the Covid-19 outbreak.
Read MoreThis is the coronavirus causing the outbreak of respiratory disease which originated in Wuhan in the province of Hubei in central China. The name is constructed from Co for corona, vi for virus and -19 for the year 2019 in which the virus was first identified.
ZG: 10
This is the second most significant thing to happen to us in the early stages of 2020. Its effect were felt throughout the world. The first was, of course, the bushfires which were watched nervously around the world.
Read MoreAs a carrier of an infectious disease a super spreader seems to be able to pass it on to a significantly larger than average number of people.
ZG: 7
A word that is on the margins of the media obsession with Covid-19. The fact that there don’t seem to have been any hasn’t given any impetus to the search.
Read MoreThe gesture of dropping the microphone to indicate that the speaker has had the last word originated with rappers and stand-up comedians in the 1980s.
ZG: 7
This is a meme that has yet to run its course as people experiment with dropping things other than mics.
Read MoreThis is a diet in which you eat for eight hours and fast for sixteen in the day, so it is one form of intermittent fasting.
ZG: 7
We seem to have an insatiable appetite for diets. This does seem to be a more effective one that all the other diets that have emerged during the year.
Read MoreClimate fires are fires brought about by climate change, being different from anything else previously experienced in their ferocity, extent and duration. The precursor is prolonged drought and the immediate cause is intense heat brought about by global warming.
ZG: 10
This has to be the most significant term that we acquired in 2019 along with the many other compounds with climate that were added to the lexicon in this period.
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