“What’s new in the dictionary” stories have been a newspaper staple for many years. Today, you’ll find them in abridged form in the Star Tribune’s “Have Your Heard” feature on page one. I spotted this one — 50 years old this week — on the front page of the Minneapolis Star. What’s with the reporter’s attitude about “rock ’n’ roll”? And why did “ploy” – which dates to the 15th century — take so long to be added to the dictionary?

DICTIONARY
GOES ON
THE ROCKS

NEW YORK – (UPI) – They must have shuddered when they did it. But they couldn’t hold out any longer. “Rock ’n’ roll” had to go in the dictionary.

The phrase has jumped into the latest edition of “The American College Dictionary” along with other newcomers such as jet stream, space station, tweeter-woofer, whirlybird, hard sell, ploy, mach, binaural broadcasting, clean (as in bombs), and screwdriver (as in cocktails).

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 4th, 2009 at 6:58 pm and is filed under Main, Society. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.