15 Words You Won't Believe They Added to the Dictionary

13 Gaydar

n. A homosexual person's ability to identify another person as homosexual by interpreting subtle signals conveyed by their appearance, interests, etc.

Ah, there's nothing like a cutesy pun to sum up this awkward and nervous era when we finally acknowledged there was such a thing as gay people without treating it as a national emergency, yet were not so cool with it that people felt OK about openly acknowledging their gayness.

Thus we had to invent this word to represent the rush of personal pride felt by the perceived ability to instinctively tell if someone prefers sausage to tacos, whether they wanted you to know it or not.

12 Grrrl

11 Threequel

n. The third film, book, event, etc. in a series; a second sequel.

Hey, thanks Hollywood, for making enough of these that we had to invent a whole new word. So will fourquel be next? Quadrology? Will we all be buying the Star Wars sixantium box set?

10 Mini-me

n. A person closely resembling a smaller or younger version of another.

Hey, remember when you thought we couldn't get any lower than "muggle"? Those were the days, right?

Nothing puts a society as firmly in its place as when you realize the language has been permanently changed by a franchise about a horny spy that repeated the same jokes and catchphrases dozens of times across two sequels. Is this one from the same movie where Mike Myers drank the cup full of shit? We don't remember.

9 Screenager

n. A person in their teens or twenties who has an aptitude for computers and the Internet.

In a curious twist, there is no word for an Amish youth who has an aptitude for barn raising or a Scientologist youth who's developed some skills in picking the lock on his cage. Still, it's probably hard to make a really shitty pun for either of those so that might explain things.

8 Cyberslacking

v. Spending one's employer's Internet and email facilities for personal activities during working hours.

Remember the dot-com bubble of the late 90s, when the Internet was new and exciting and every novelty erotica site you found was like Christmas morning, only with fisting? Cyberslacking is the word-product of that. In retrospect, using the Internet to kill time at work wasn't the Tron-like revolutionary experience this word implies, so regular "slacking" would suffice just as well.

Then again, we might as well have the word now, as this dongtacular practice isn't going away any time soon.

7 Lookism

6 Frankenfood

n.Derogatory a food that contains genetically modified ingredients.

Really, it's looking like a memorable pun is all that's required for a word to be embraced by society as a whole. So even if you have something that has saved millions of lives like, say, genetically modified crops, if you can think of a kick ass and mildly amusing way to dumb it down and liken it to a shambling, murderous corpse-man, congratulations. You're making language!

5 Riffage

n. Guitar riffs.

Slightly more annoying than making nouns into verbs for no reason ("hold on, I'm Twittering!") is the trend of pluralizing them with "age." No need to say "make love" when "humpage" will do just as well. And, hell, we can label all fire alarms with "Fuck, burnage!" to make it that much clearer to everyone.

4 Bouncebackability

n. The ability to recover from near-defeat in a competition; the ability to recover from a setback.

While resilience is already a perfectly good word that means the exact same thing, bouncebackability does sound much more like something a semi-literate alcoholic might put on a resume, giving it that added appeal of mouthbreathability words like resilience lack.

3 Prebuttal

n. A rebuttal for an accusation before it is made.

The sad part about this one is that it only sounds completely insane until you realize it's mostly done by politicians, after which it sort of makes perfect sense. They know they're full of shit, but hope this somehow can preemptively stop anybody from pointing it out.

"Now, you're all going to accuse me of being a racist here, but let me explain why I think minorities shouldn't be allowed to drive..."

2 Ego-surfing

1 Meatspace

n. The physical world, as opposed to virtual.

Doubtlessly coined by a level 80 Druid tank somewhere in the World of Warcraft, it's a sad day for the species when what you may recognize as that in which everything exists, needs a special term to differentiate it from the "real" world of Facebook friends and LOLcats.

Soon you'll hear it used in sentences like, "So all of the crops are dying and the air is turning poisonous? Bah, who cares about all that stuff that happens in lame old Meatspace."

For more some words you'll wish you had looked up, check out 9 Words That Don't Mean What You Think.

And visit Cracked.com's Top Picks because, well shit, you don't have anything better to do.