OED Announcement Produces Tears of Joy for Texters
November 18, 2015
Are you an amateur scientist who yearns for a formal name for your activity? No problem. You are now involved in “citizen science.”
Are you annoyed because of the absence of an honorific title that doesn’t indicate gender? Your distress is over. “Mx” has come to your rescue.
This news may produce “tears of joy” for those who prefer to express themselves via electronic communication.
The Oxford English Dictionary (OED), an arbiter of English language usage for generations, has anointed “citizen science” and “Mx” as words established enough in daily usage to merit insertion in that respected reference work.
The complete OED definition for “Citizen science” is “scientific work undertaken by members of the general public, often in collaboration with or under the direction of professional scientists and scientific institutions.” So if you are a volunteer who collects rain samples for scientific analysis, you are in a citizen science program.
Mx (pronounced miks or muks) is a gender neutral title for people who prefer not to use a familiar Mr., Mrs. or Ms. The Mx label originated in England and its acceptance is spreading in the United States, especially among government agencies and businesses.
For the first time ever, the OED Word of the Year isn’t even a word, but a type of electronic image officially called the “Face with Tears of Joy” emoji. The emoji is a round face with a smiling mouth and a tear coming out of each eye. The word is Japanese in origin, combining the word e (picture) and moji (letter or character). The image was once largely the province of texting teenagers but now has spread to the public at large.
Citizen science, Mx, and emoji have made the OED cut recently. Not so fortunate were “on fleek,” meaning “very good or stylish,” and “lumbersexual,” a term used to describe a type of urban hipster who wears a checkered flannel shirt and a beard. Better luck next year.