Fifty Years Among the New Words

American Speech, the journal of the American Dialect Society has included a regular collection of neologisms called 'Among the New Words'. One issue, for example, includes four quotations for 'date rape,' two for 'designated driver,' and six for 'DNA fingerprinting,' 'intifada', and other current terms. Complete documentation is given for all citations, which are fuller than those given in most dictionaries. At the time these terms appeared in 'Among the New Words', they appeared in none of the major dictionaries. A survey of 'Among the New Words' can therefore reveal much about the origin and early use of these expressions and the social climate in which they prospered. Now this valuable resource is available in one volume, first published in 1992. The original articles themselves are reproduced and John Algeo has prepared a complete index, with glossary, to every word and expression included in the 113 installments of 'Among the New Words'. It is a unique repository of language use from 1941–91.