Have you seen the top 15 words and definitions that the Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary will be adding for 2014?  If not here is the list, if so please enjoy once again:

• Auto-Tune:  a proprietary signal processor, to adjust or alter (a recording or voice) with Auto-Tune software or other audio-editing software, especially to correct sung notes that are out of tune
• Cap-and-trade:  relating to or being a system that caps the amount of carbon emissions a given company may produce but allows it to buy rights to produce additional emissions from a company that does not use the equivalent amount of its own allowance
• Catfish:  a person who sets up a false personal profile on a social networking site for fraudulent or deceptive purposes
• Crowdfunding:  the practice of soliciting financial contributions from a large number of people, especially from the online community
• Dubstep:  a type of electronic dance music having prominent bass lines and syncopated drum patterns
• Fangirl:  a girl or woman who is extremely or overly enthusiastic fan of someone or something
• Freegan:  an activist who scavenges for free food (as in waste receptacles at stores and restaurants) as a means of reducing consumption of resources
• Gamification:  the process of adding games or gameline elements to something (as a task) so as to encourage participation
• Hashtag:  a word or phrase preceded by the symbol # that classifies or categorizes the accompanying text, such as a tweet
• Selfie:  an image of oneself taken by oneself using a digital camera, especially for posting on social networks
• Social networking:  the creation and maintenance of personal and business relationships, especially online
• Steampunk:  the science fiction dealing with 19^th-century societies dominated by historical or imagined steam-powered technology
• Turducken:  a boneless chicken stuffed into a boneless duck stuffed into a boneless turkey
• Tweep:  a person who uses the Twitter online message service to send and receive tweets
• Yooper:  a native or resident of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan—used as a nickname 

So there you have it!  I wonder just how many of these words you are familiar with.  It would be so much fun to gather your friends and have each attempt to give the definition for each word! What a hoot!

In many ways it made me feel old as I actually only knew eight of these words.  Does that mean I am “out of the loop”?  Does that mean I have not been paying attention to current events or fads?  Those things certainly will be true for some people – those dealing with addictions probably have not spent much time being either interested in or paying attention to anything other than the substance.  Regarding these words I feel the loss is not that great!  In other areas of your life, though, your lack of attention is huge! Interesting, isn’t it, how are actions impact our life!

“We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we’re curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.”  –  Walt Disney