London - Stuck in a notspot? Well at least you can be thankful that you’re not in danger of ringxiety or becoming intexicated.
And if you didn’t understand most of that, then you may want to phone a friend.
For all are terms invented to describe the perils of cellphones.
They are among a list of 1,000 new words and phrases included in the Word Lover’s Gallimaufry, a special section of the latest edition of the Chambers Thesaurus that focuses on how our language is evolving.
A “notspot” is an area where there is no phone signal, the opposite of a hotspot; “ringxiety” is a feeling of slight panic when you hear a phone with an identical ringtone to yours; and “intexication” is the state of distraction experienced when sending a text message.
Not all the new words, or neologisms, are phone-related. Another to have entered common usage, among younger generations at least, is “butters”, an insult that is short for the American phrase “butt ugly”.
And the rise of the likes of famous heiresses Kim Kardashian and Paris Hilton has led to use of the word “celebutante”, a cross between “celebrity” and “debutante”.
To get into the official dictionary, a word must stand the test of time. But the thesaurus’s Gallimaufry, which means “jumble”, includes words that may simply be a passing fad.
Robert Williams, the thesaurus’s commissioning editor, said: “English is such a fluid language. Much more so than most others.”
He added that the list has also provided him with a few favourites. “I rather like ‘glamping’, as in camping at an upmarket site”, he said. “I also like ‘social notworking’, which is posting on social networking sites when you should be working.” - Daily Mail