Just because a word isn’t printed in the dictionary doesn’t mean that it’s not a word. You might hear it used for years or even read it in newspapers without an official definition on the books. But there comes a point when that widespread usage can no longer be ignored, and the word is granted a permanent place amid the annals of lexicography. Merriam-Webster recently added 1,400 entries to this prestigious club, spanning Gen Z and Gen Alpha slang, technology jargon, culinary insights, and plenty more terms that got their start on social media. Here’s a look at 10 of the new entries that caught our eye.

If you’ve jammed out to artists such as Steely Dan or Kenny Loggins, you may be a fan of yacht rock. This newly enshrined musical term is “a style of soft rock music originating in the 1970s and 1980s.” The term postdates the genre: It was coined in 2005 as the title of a comedy web series called Yacht Rock, whose episodes focused on fictional portrayals of the musicians now associated with the genre.

The term “looksmaxxing” refers to a social media phenomenon in which people go to “sometimes extreme or dangerous measures intended to increase one’s physical attractiveness.” It may involve something as simple as giving up sugar, but it also includes more drastic interventions, such as intense plastic surgery procedures or even whacking one’s jaw with a mallet to slightly alter its shape (don’t do this). The suffix “-maxxing” can be applied facetiously to other unofficial terms such as “sleepmaxxing” (improving one’s sleep habits) and “proteinmaxxing” (eating a lot of protein in each meal).

You might have seen the term “superfood” on the menu at your favorite salad spot or smoothie bar. It refers to any food that’s rich in nutrients, antioxidants, fatty acids, and other elements considered to be good for health. Common superfoods include salmon, broccoli, blueberries, and more.

What some people call “raccoons,” others humorously refer to as trash pandas — a moniker that now holds a place in Merriam-Webster’s official dictionary. This silly name was first used in 2014 as part of an innocuous comment made on the website Reddit by a person with the username CarlPeligro. What seemed like a simple throwaway became adopted by internet users far and wide.

Have you ever felt anxiety creep in as the weekend winds down and the workweek fast approaches? Then you’ve likely experienced a typical case of the Sunday scaries, another name for those “feelings of anxiety or sadness that arise on Sunday from the knowledge that the weekend is almost over.” It may not be listed in any medical books, but a recommended remedy for Sunday scaries is to order takeout and stream a few episodes of your favorite Netflix show.

If you watch a video and it makes you uncomfortable because you can’t determine whether the people in it are real or AI-generated, that’s a demonstration of the uncanny valley. It’s a “psychological effect characterized by feelings of unease or revulsion in response to the nearly but imperfectly lifelike quality of something.” With the rise of AI, this feeling is becoming much more widespread, so be on the lookout for those feelings of unease.

The word “parasocial” applies to the relationship that many diehard fans have with their favorite celebrity or even a fictional character. A parasocial relationship is “a one-sided emotional connection with someone whom one does not know personally.” The term was coined in 1956 by two sociologists trying to name the new types of relationships they saw people developing with TV personalities.

Poll a large group of people on the status of Nelson Mandela, and many of them will claim he died in prison in the 1980s. But that didn’t actually happen, despite many people believing it did. This shared confusion gave rise to the term “Mandela Effect,” a “phenomenon in which many people collectively misremember a specific fact, event, or detail in a consistent manner.” Other examples include people thinking that Darth Vader said, “Luke, I am your father,” or the idea that the Fruit of the Loom logo features a cornucopia (both untrue).

When you’re in the early stages of falling in love, you might be overcome by a sensation of limerence. It’s “a state of blissful usually temporary infatuation experienced during the early period of a romantic relationship.” Limerence doesn’t necessarily mean you’re actually in love; rather, it’s a feeling of being infatuated by something that’s new and exciting.

You’ve probably heard of Bitcoin, which holds actual value to its holders. But all across the internet you’ll come upon various examples of a meme coin, which is virtual currency created in honor of Internet memes or celebrities, often without any actual use or value. One of the most popular examples is Dogecoin, named after an internet meme that was popular in 2013, featuring a Shiba Inu speaking in broken English.

The slang term “dude” is as versatile as a plain white T-shirt or utility baseball player. You can use it to greet a good friend (“What’s up, dude?”), as a generic synonym for “guy” (“Some dude just paid for my coffee”), or in common expressions to convey approval or emotion (“Rock on, dude” or “No way, dude”). Or maybe someone did you wrong, causing you to shout, “Dude, why did you do that?” 

But as wide-ranging as the uses of “dude” may be today, the term was once much more specific and came with an insulting connotation. Let’s look at the origins of this word, which some believe goes back to before the American Revolution.

One theory, from linguists Barry Popik and Gerald Cohen in 2013, claims “dude” was likely derived from “doodle,” as in the 18th-century folk song “Yankee Doodle.” While the song is considered patriotic by many today, it was initially a song of mockery by the Brits toward Americans. 

The lyrics of that ditty mention a “yankee doodle dandy,” where “yankee” referred to New Englanders, “doodle” came from the German Dödel (meaning “fool”), and “dandy” was and still is defined as “a man who gives exaggerated attention to personal appearance.” Essentially, the character Yankee Doodle was an oafish American who tried to emulate his fancy European counterparts by sticking a feather in his cap.

 “Dude” is believed to be a variant of “dood,” a shortened version of the word “doodle,” but it wasn’t coined until more than a century later, in the 1880s. Residents of New York City began using it in a derisive manner to describe foppish men — those who were very concerned with their appearance and wore the height of fashion. The word became more and more popular by the day, appearing in poems and New York Times articles.

Linguistics professor Michael Adams is less sure of the connection to “Yankee Doodle” than Popik and Cohen, but Adams concurs that the word “dude” was firmly established as an insult by the late 19th century. “It’s not a friendly term at that point,” he told Reader’s Digest.

As the decades went on, however, “dude” shed its insulting connotation. The change didn’t happen overnight, of course: There was a brief transition in the 19th century where “dude” was used by Westerners to describe visitors from big cities on the East coast. This gave rise to touristy attractions called dude ranches, where city slickers (or dudes) could stay and pay to experience the cowboy lifestyle.

During the 20th century, “dude” shifted from its original meaning even further as younger generations embraced the term as a generic way to refer to a person. While traditionally male, it has become fairly gender-neutral. Linguist Michael Adams believes “dude” is popular today because of the term’s use in 1980s cinema such as Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. These films helped forever change the definition of “dude,” Adams told Reader’s Digest, “from an East Coast person who doesn’t know a saddle from a stirrup to a guy who is righteous and whom everybody admires.”

The theme from the TV show Cops repeatedly asks, “Whatcha gonna do when they come for you?” But curious linguists may pose an entirely different question: Where does the word “cops” come from? While it’s common to refer to the police as cops, the terms don’t seem that similar, beyond a few shared letters. But there’s one backstory that explains the entire situation, as well as a few popular, albeit untrue theories we’d like to dispel.

One oft-repeated theory is that “cop” is an acronym for “constable on patrol,” but that’s not true. Another common misconception is that it references the copper badges and buttons worn on vintage New York City police uniforms — also false. The plain reality is that “cop” is derived from the dated verb “to cop,” defined as “to seize” or “to capture,” as one might nab a criminal.

The English verb “cop” is of northern British origin, coined in the early 18th century. It may come from the French term caper, meaning “to seize,” which itself comes from the Latin capere, meaning “to take.”

The term “copper” — as in a police officer — came about in 1838, used in the February 3 edition of Cockney Adventures: “Do it at vonce, else the coppers ‘ill come,’ said he of the short pipe.” This evolution of the verb “cop” to the noun “copper” was pretty straightforward. It follows the trajectory of how other verbs became nouns, such as “make” to “maker,” “pitch” to “pitcher,” and so on.

Within two decades, the noun “copper” was shortened to just “cop.” In other words, we went from the verb “cop” to the noun “copper,” and then back to “cop,” but this time as a noun. The slang made its way to the United States by the late 1850s, as people began referring to police officers as cops far and wide. 

Other informal and slang terms have similarly clear backstories. For example, “po-po” is a shortened form of “police” that repeats the first syllable, and “five-0” (the numeral 0, not the letter “O”) comes from the television series Hawaii Five-0. (The name comes from Hawaii being the 50th state.) But origin stories aren’t always so well documented; for instance, nobody knows why people refer to police as fuzz, and yet the slang persists. 

SOS — used as a distress signal from sinking ships, castaways on a desert island, hikers lost in the wilderness, and others in emergency situations — is the most universally understood cry for help on the planet. But ask someone what it stands for and there’s a good chance you’ll receive an answer that is both common and completely wrong. “SOS” does not stand for “save our souls” or “save our ship.” In fact, it wasn’t built from words at all. Here we take a look at the roots of the famous three-letter sequence and how it became so ingrained in the global consciousness. 

In the mid-1800s, nations used different distress signals, primarily at sea, designed to be sent via Morse code, flag signals, or both. Morse code — a signaling system using dots, dashes, and spaces — was created in the 1830s by Samuel F.B. Morse and Alfred Lewis Vail, and was well established by the turn of the century, making it a natural choice for calling for help.  

The British, who were the preeminent maritime and naval power during the 19th century, used the code CQD. This sequence was established by the Marconi Company, a British telecommunications and engineering company. Its wireless operators used CQ as a code to signal all stations along a telegraph line, and the distress code CQD was an extension of this, meaning “All stations. Distress!” (It did not stand for “Come Quick, Danger,” an apt phrase that was applied later.) 

The Germans, meanwhile, used the code SOE as a general inquiry call; the Americans used NC (meaning “call for help without delay”); and various other nations had their own unique codes. But having different signals was not ideal, especially in emergency situations, and eventually an international conference was arranged to do something about it. 

In 1906, the International Radiotelegraph Conference was held in Berlin, Germany. On the agenda was the standardization of ship-to-shore communications. During the conference, 27 countries signed one notable provision: the adoption of SOS as a truly international distress signal. 

The code wasn’t chosen to spell out a particular word or abbreviate a specific phrase. It didn’t even take into account individual letters. It was adopted purely for its simplicity within the Morse code system that Vail and Morse had built decades earlier. Radio conditions at sea were often poor, and any signal chosen needed to be short, unmistakable, and impossible to confuse with routine chatter. The solution was a continuous string of three dots, three dashes, and three dots — easy to remember, quick to type, and clear in its interpretation. 

The sequence came to be called SOS only after it was selected, because that particular pattern matches the individual Morse code sequences for S (three dots), O (three dashes), and S (three dots) again. In other words, the letters were a readable side effect of a pattern telecommunications engineers deemed effective, not a phrase someone chose first and then translated into code.

The first confirmed use of SOS in a genuine emergency came in June 1909, when the RMS Slavonia ran aground near the Azores. Nearby ships picked up the distress signal and rescued everyone aboard. Then, on August 11, 1909, the steamer SS Arapahoe ran into problems off the coast of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. The telegraph operator was initially confused about which distress signal to send, as SOS had only recently replaced the CQD signal he was more familiar with. He decided to send both signals, in what became the first transmission of SOS in America. Three years later, the RMS Titanic sank in the North Atlantic Ocean. Its operator also sent out both CQD and SOS calls for help, in the most widely reported and tragic use of SOS after its adoption. 

From there, SOS spread far beyond maritime radio. Its rhythm is so simple and distinct that it can be tapped out audibly or flashed with a light, making it just as useful for earthquake survivors trapped under rubble as for stranded hikers stuck on a mountaintop. The letters are also instantly recognizable when written out — perhaps most famously by castaways who spell out “SOS” on sandy beaches in the hope of signaling passing aircraft. And this isn’t just a trope in Hollywood movies. Numerous real-life cases exist, including a recent 2020 stranding on the tiny Pikelot Island in the South Pacific, from which three men were rescued after writing “SOS” on the beach using foliage and debris. 

SOS has since grown to be a universally recognized signal for distress — not only in actual emergencies but also in pop culture. ABBA used it to great effect in their 1975 hit song “SOS,” while the classic 1979 rock track “Message in a Bottle” by The Police features Sting singing, “I’ll send an SOS to the world.” More recently, Rihanna and the Jonas Brothers have released tracks featuring the famous distress code. 

Despite the universal nature of SOS, the actual meaning of the letters is still widely misunderstood. Many people believe that they stand for something — typically “save our souls,” “save our ship,” or even “send out succor” — when in fact they stand for nothing at all. These are all instances of what is called a backronym — a phrase made up to fit the letters of an existing word (or sequence of letters, in the case of SOS), treating it as if it’s an abbreviation when it’s not.

Another example of a backronym is “Amber Alert,” originally named after a missing child, Amber Hagerman, but later given the backronym “America’s Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response.”

In any case, SOS has proved to be incredibly effective, not only by its continued use in emergency situations but also by its widespread adoption in popular culture. But its success has little to do with any hidden meaning and everything to do with simplicity. A signal designed to be heard clearly through static, using a code invented decades earlier, is still just as easy to recognize a century later, whether it’s tapped out in Morse code, stomped into snow, sung by Sting, or texted to a friend to request immediate extraction from an awkward date.