PHOTO CONTRIBUTED
Mike Myers
Austin Powers catch phrase added to dictionary
Stephen Colbert also gets a word added to Oxford English Dictionary
THE CANADIAN PRESS Published Saturday December 15th, 2007
TORONTO - Canadian comedian Mike Myers has a new claim to fame.
One of his invented words has been entered into the Oxford English Dictionary Online, to remain recorded for all time.
The word "shagadelic" as used in the Austin Powers movies joined the thousands of new words added to the dictionary each year.
This month's other new additions include putz as a verb, flip phone, webmistress, life partner and helicopter parent.
The Oxford English Dictionary is a history of words in English dating to 1150. It contains more than half a million words, along with their meaning and history.
The OED defines "shagadelic", in part, as "sexy, esp. in a psychedelic or retro way."
The word is one of thousands of words added to OED Online in 2007, but one of the few that can be traced back to an individual, says Jesse Sheidlower, editor-at-large at the OED.
"The number of times you can actually say, 'This was coined by so-and-so,' is actually very small," says Sheidlower.
Sheidlower can think of only two other recent examples: "truthiness," popularized by comedian Stephen Colbert on his show The Colbert Report, and "locavore," recently coined by a San Francisco activist to describe someone who buys produce locally or grows or picks their own.
"We're not rating words on whether we think the language needs them or whether it's going to upset anyone. We go by if they're being used," says Sheidlower.
Readers all over the world submit suggestions for new words. Katherine Barber, editor-in-chief of the Canadian Oxford Dictionary, reads logging magazines, fish farming magazines, dairy farmer magazines, hockey books, figure skating books and curling books in her search for new words.
"The first thing many people think is that lexicographers only look at great literature. We don't. We do read great Canadian literature, but we read anything, really. I read Eric Lindros's autobiography, which was great for hockey terms, and he's in fact quoted in the OED now because I read his autobiography."
Austin Powers catch phrase added to dictionary.
- Borderstone
