Please Don’t Overshare

Ted Landphair of Voice of America had an interesting story recently about a contest that is held (takes place) each year by the publishers of Webster’s New World Dictionary to pick a new word or term that became popular in the past year to put into their dictionary.  This “word of the year” is voted on by the public selecting from among five choices.

Here were the choices for 2008, with the definitions:

  • Overshare – telling people more than you intended to or wanted to, especially online (such as Facebook, Twitter, and other similar sites).
  • Leisure sickness – the idea that some people feel better while they’re working and worse when they are on vacation (leisure means not working).
  • Cyberchondriac – this is a variation on the word hypochondriac, who is someone who imagines that they are sick all the time.  A cyberchondriac is someone who reads about some illness on the Internet and then thinks that they have it, too.
  • Selective ignorance – this is when you ignore on purpose (intentionally, deliberately) certain information, such as your emails.
  • Youthanasia – this is a variation of euthanasia, which is when someone is killed because they are very sick.  Youthanasia is when you try to stay young longer than you should by getting plastic surgery on your face, skin, etc. to make you look younger.

So who won the contest?  Overshare.  I will try not to overshare in 2009.

~Jeff

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20 Responses to Please Don’t Overshare

  1. robson5791 says:

    A few years ago Megadeth came out CD Youthanasia, and I thougt that it was about young men who preferered died young than live in this terrible world. Now I know this is bottox, plastic and so on on someone face. Wery interesting.

  2. Julio says:

    I think the new suggested words are very funny, even if somebody could use one of them to communicate with myself, whether by writting or talking, I would not be able to understand anything and then I likely would tend to think that this guy is crazy.
    In any case, It is a real proof about the way that English speakers have to upgrade their language.
    Best regards from Spain,
    Julio.

  3. emiliano says:

    “Selective ignorance” …I love these two words and the meaning, as is something I am practicing day by day about a lot of things I dislike such political anoucements, people talking and talking about things they don’t know a bit, emails, some phone callings, publicity, tv programs, politicians intentions that never fulfill… yes I like this expression.
    “Overshare” is also nice and may be is something we are going to do for sure sooner or later.
    “Leisure sickness” that’s great also, but I am willing that this sickness don’t happen to me ever.

    To me these three are the best, but the other two seems to have the chance also.

    Thank you Jeff, it´s really very interesting subject.

  4. elcomandant says:

    I think had to have won “Youthanasia”. This is a word that is fashion nowadays because many people, men or women, go to the plastic surgeon to look better.

    About “Leisure sickness”, I’m impressed which is its meaning. Really there are people that feel ill when they are on vacation? To be honest, is difficult to understand for me. We must remember, according The Bible tells us, that when Adan ate the apple, God punished her to work to can eat, so all of humans, too.

    What a jerk Adan was. Have I to go to work every day due to an apple? Can you believe it?. Oh my God, this is not fair. Adan is Adan and I am me. Forgive me already, please. Besides, I never liked apples.

    Regards.

  5. ho-sun says:

    When writers do no overshare their real feelings or experiences, their works become insipid and cannot srike the chord with readers.
    Leisure sickness are meant to the workaholic who just engross in their duties other than recreation.
    Cyberchondriac is associated with edgy students who are going to sit for an important exam and find that they seem to have some serious illness or others.
    Selective ignorance is necessary in life because we cannot have unlimited capacity in our grey matter.
    Euthanasia means mercy killing and it is sentimental. Frankly, none want to be said as old as a hill, so the telly show Nick/Tuck is pretty popular.

  6. Le Trung Hieu says:

    I’m suffering that leisure sickness. I always feel uncomfortable when I have nothing to do. I can’t stay in one position and do nothing.
    In Vietnam, there is a saying ” Nhàn c? vi b?t thi?n” which has the same meaning with “Leisure sickess”.
    It means idleness is the root of all evils.

  7. Masakazu Takano says:

    Yeah, like robson5791, the first word that came to my mind was Megadeth. I didn’t even try to figure out what it means at that time, but now I understand.
    Well, in my opinion, “word of the year” goes to Cyberchondriac.
    I think that’s me.
    I have a headache and stiff shoulders all the time and get upset or angry very easily recently.
    And I read some articles about these symptoms then I thought myself the case.
    I might be suffering from depression !
    But actually, maybe not at all !

  8. Peter says:

    What is the ground rule upon which these world are created. Please dont tell me all these new words are a bunch of goundless improvisions. I always believed that there is a stong foundation to Your Word-cluttered mother tongue.
    what do you think of word-cluttered ? Do u think next year It might come on the top of the above mentioned list? Please , don’t take it in the wrong way ,I dont mean to be disrespectfull.
    All I am saying is English language itself consist of 800000 words;adding more to it every single year is not a wise thing to do.

    Peace out

    There is an old saying : The biger they are ,The harder they fall . somehow you can apply it here ,can’t you?

  9. Peter says:

    on the top of above mentioned

  10. Tania says:

    Hi ! I think “youthanasia” is the vogue-word . We all want to be youngs for ever . It is impossible , but …

    An English proverb for a boy washing the car : ” That which may be bitter to endure may be sweet to remember ” .

    All the best for you all and always youngs , at least in our heart .

    Tania

  11. Peter says:

    MY Dearest Mentor Jeff,

    Sorry For my boorish comment about your educational posting. As you well know, English deals with a vast variety of words and expressions. If you want to come off classy ,or sound sophisticated ,you have to use lots of difficult ,far reach ,fansy words.Believe me my friend ,I almost wrecked my brain to learn just a touch of it, still ,as you can see, I am In the middle of now where.

    And ,My friend, Your act as a catalyst in this endavour would be greatly appriciated.

  12. Peter says:

    In terms of educating us

  13. emiliano says:

    What I think is that something that is growing is live and at the moment it stopped it begins to dead. So happend with hundred of lenguages that
    now are dead but before they were spoken by millions of people from differents lands. Greek or Latin are a good example.
    English is a lenguage that is growing and spreading all over the world so I see natural that new words are included in a good dictionary as the
    Webster´s.
    Of course, no body has any chance of learning all of them, not even thirty thousand or less. In fact when we are speaking in our own lenguage we
    use nearly five or six thousand it depends of our knowledge or how much we use to read.
    But it has nothing to do with the richness of a live lenguage as English or Spanish. What it for sure that these two lenguages and other that I don’t
    know, may be Arab or Chinese are growing and they’ll give a legacy to other future lenguages that now we don’t can imagine.
    Same as Latin, Greek an old Arab did to French, Spanish, English and many lenguages that different countries are speaking now.
    Regards Peter.

  14. Elisângelo says:

    wow! This is an interesting topic to talking about it, since it has a direct affect in our learnig in english language. For a native english speaker we can say that is obvious to realize when you are in front of a new word or expression and in the most it is easier to make sence of the meanings of it since it came front of your own language background. But I am very skeptical about a non-native english speaker to notice which word tend to be a recently made-up word, since day after day we are finding out tons of different words, which ones maybe ordinary words for a native speaker, but still being new words adding to our shortand mere vocabulary.

    Nevertheless, this fact is quite understandable since we have to admmit that even our own language which are foreign to american an british people still changing since than our country founders ancestors era, and still modifying as the years are passing by in our day-to-day lives.

    Well, those facts bring us to the conclusion that every single language or whatever tribal dialect it is, they have been changing itself, still modifying for now and they`re going to keep up moving in this process …

    …do you know why?

    languages are alive!

    to all of you, my best regards!
    preto.

  15. Peter says:

    boorished comment

  16. Jose Maria, San Sebastian says:

    Dear Jeff ¡
    You never “overshare”. It is really a pleasure moment when I am in touch with the ESL Podcast Team.
    I think that I choice the word “Youthanasia”. Very nice.

    Best regards from Spain.

  17. emiliano says:

    “Boorished” another new word to encrease my vocabulary, I have to look for its meaning in the dictionary, thanks Peter you seems to be very acute and that is always welcome in a blog.
    Thanks again.

  18. Parhm says:

    Dear Jeff ,

    The joke is on us.

    The fact is ,you don’t over share anything ,it is us over sharing our endless questions with you. I have to say, what we got going here is socking up all the indulgenc through a one-way sharing process.

    You know what the rule of thumb says : share and share alike. You share but…… . So ,My friend the joke you made at the end is on us.

    All the joke aside, please keep indulging us.

    Keep up the good word my friend

  19. Parhm says:

    All the jokes aside, Please keep on indulging us. I should see a doctor . Defenetly I got fly of ideas problem

  20. Peter says:

    Thanks my friend Emilliono, Thasnks for the kind comment.

    My friend it is borrish not boorised ,My bad sorry . But, Look it up for ur self or ask the walking dictionary ‘Jeff’ to Explain it to us. I know mothing my friend ,totally illeterate.

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