Lileks: New words of the year aren't words — unless you speak acronym

Merriam-Webster has added 455 entries to the dictionary, and you might be bemused by their choices. Or you could be indifferent and otherwise nonplussed. It does beg the question: Why add words to the dictionary when people cannot correctly use the ones we already have?

You know, words like "bemused," "nonplussed," and phrases like "beg the question."

The dictionary's website says they added 455, but only lists 34. This is like Taco Bell saying they've added 14,293 new items to the menu, but only telling you about two of them. I mean, what are the other words? Maybe they might give us some necessary information about what's going on in the world, such as:

Zorgimufgren: the state of being momentarily paralyzed by a thick, hot, wet beam shot from a scout ship from the planet Orion; the word spoken in sheer terror by people who have just emerged from the paralysis.

Or ...

Cradgiddy: colloquial term for the levitating crustaceans that pour through the open windows of home with no explanation.

But no, they have to give us "amirite," amirite? (It's a sarcastic way of saying "Am I right," and is intended to indicate the opposite, sort of.) They think "dad bod" is a term anyone uses, when it's limited to underpaid People magazine headline writers chiding Leonardo DiCaprio for sporting a pasta paunch.

"Ah, here it is. '1. A camera in a doorbell. 2. Any doorbell that has a camera.' Well, that clears that up."

Many of the words come from the digital space, like FTW. You might ask: Efftewuh? No, F- T- W. What does that stand for? Flee to Willmar? Freeze That Wombat? Can't imagine that comes up a lot. No, it's "For the Win." You refer to someone's well written refutation of someone else's tweet, and someone else says this, "FTW." Or at least they did 10 years ago.

They included "TBH," or "to be honest," but didn't include "NGL," or "Not gonna lie," which has replaced TBH. Both look like guttural caveman utterances.

Here's the real puzzler: flutternutter. Yes. The sandwich made from marshmallow cream and peanut butter. It's been around since the 1960s. It took 60 years to make it into the dictionary. Two possible reasons:

1. Like a professional baseball player who bet on the games, fluffernutter violated some ethical code a long time ago, but public sentiment has come around. People realize that its contributions to the culture exceed its moral lapses. If this is the case, maybe Pete Rose gets in the Hall of Fame next year.

"You would have us admit this abomination, this ... this fluttering of nuttery into the dictionary, to sit drooling with its idiot grin alongside Truth, God and Universe? What, pray tell, is next? Groovy? Acid trip? You're fired.