![]() The Oxford English Dictionary, widely considered the most authoritative record of the English language, adds anywhere between 500 and 1,500 new words or phrases - and sometimes even more - every March, June, September and December. The one indisputable fact is that English is growing. It depends on how you define “words” and whether you only count those still in use. ![]() Actually, it is just an informal synonym for well when conveying surprise or shock at something, as well as an interjection to start a conversation or introduce a new sentence.How many words are there in the English language? Trying to answer this question may take longer than actually getting a dictionary and counting them one by one. ![]() It is said that welp is the oral way of expressing what is implied by a shrug. Let's get this over with already, shan't we? The last top trending word of 2017 is another teenage slang term you can frequently find in that new agora of culture and knowledge: Twitter (yes, I'm being sarcastic). ![]() But I'll be crystal clear this time: If you are an anti-vaxxer and my comments offend you, I don't give a frag. Just so you know, I don't usually discuss my beliefs openly on such topics as religion, politics, sports or adding chorizo to paella. This link will take you to a detailed map of the evolution of these diseases, so you can see what I'm talking about. Using unfounded and outlandish arguments such as the one in the gif above ("vaccines cause autism in children"), the anti-vax movement is behind the recent outbreak of diseases such as measles, mumps or polio in many countries who had successfully managed to eradicate them long ago. Short for vaccination, this expression has been widely used in 2017, the year when the so-called anti-vaxxers have finally exhausted the patience of many governments in Europe and around the world, who have started fining those irresponsible parents who decide not to vaccinate their children. The most likely explanation is that covfefe was a typo of coverage ( negative press coverage is a common phrase), but instead of clarifying, the president’s press secretary cryptically said “a small group of people know exactly what he meant.” Anyway, it was worth it if only for the LOLs. To this day, we still don't know what the heck Donald Trump meant to say with that word. Half of Twitter and journalists from all over the world couldn't make up their minds as to whether it was a joke or he had really meant to send some obscure message to the reptilian government in the shadows.Įven the famous Merriam Webster dictionary-frequent fact-checker and internet troll to The Donald-was left speechless for once (see Tweet to the right). Donald Trump's famous tweet was published on May 31, 2017, and it immediately became the trending word of the moment. That is NOT our next trending word, but it does accurately describe this and other statements from the current U.S. Now, there's this term I absolutely love in the English language: brain fart. So, there's another good reason for this word to be trending in 2017, just like our next word. Donald Trump has also been known to talk a lot about Antifa. The first one was particularly infamous due to the brutal confrontations between Antifa and white supremacists. The main reasons for this trending word in 2017 were the numerous violent protests and demonstrations carried out during the summer in cities such as Charlottesville, Phoenix and Berkeley. Quite the opposite, the antifa movement is quite active overseas, and is composed of people from different ideologies, mainly anarchists, socialists and communists, but there are also liberals and social-democrats among their ranks. With the antifa movement being quite active and on the rise in my home country, we Spaniards tend to believe that Anglo-Saxon countries are not so keen on them. It is a conglomerate of several anti-fascist (hence anti-fa) groups, with no formal organization nor official leader. The Antifa movement in the USA, though, is slightly different from the one in Spain. And this term, antifa, is fairly well-known in my mother tongue, as it has the same meaning, and is quite trendy as well. OK, as some of you may know-or may have already noticed-I'm a Spaniard.
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