I have a birthday coming up and it got me thinking about a post I saw a while back about Merriam-Webster’s “Time Traveller”. The site lets you pick a year and take a peek at the (English) words that were first used in print in that year. Pretty nifty! A few gems from my birth year include: boom box, camcorder, LAN, snowboard, and sysop. I like to compare that to much more-recent words - like blockchain (2011), or 2014’s manspreading. Unfortunately it only goes up to 2017 - I would’ve liked to have seen the results for 2019 this close to the new year - but nevertheless it’s an interesting linguistic glimpse into the zeitgeist of each year.
What words popped up the year you were born?