Word news: Don't take a staycation with your frenemy

The editors of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary have added about 100 words for the 2009 edition and to the dictionary online. Among them are staycation, a vacation spent at home or nearby, and frenemy, a person who pretends to be a friend but who is actually an enemy. Both of these are portmanteaus, words that blend parts of other words to create a new term. As John Morse, president and publisher of Merriam-Webster Inc., told Reuters, these new words meet a need and, as in the case of staycation, can quickly become part of our everyday language.  Read the Associated Press story about the new words here.

The recession has helped create several new terms, as Wallet Pop points out.  A transumer is a consumer who is always in transition; nowadays, that term describes people who rent rather than buy things they need. The Recession Wire defines a few new terms related to the recession, including  bleakonomics, "the dire forecasts, depressing warnings, and otherwise gloomy chatter that’s still brewing beneath the recent round of cheerier economic predictions."

Decades from now, people will be able to see what was on our minds when they read the dictionary updates and examine the vocabulary of our age.