ה ז'ה.

Wes Lawrence

In Is Now In in Dictionary

If the matter has been troubling you, it should please you to know that nem is now in. In established usage, that is, as a colloquial adjective meaning "currently smart, popular, fashionable, as etc." And what it is in is the dictionary the 1966 printing of Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language, which is just off 'the presses.

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In is not the only newly established word or usage in the new printing, as I learned in a chat with David B. Guralnik, vice president of the World Publishing Co. and general WES LAWRENCE editor of the dictionary.

Hopefully is also in, as a substiate for "it is to be hoped" as in the senattence: "Hopefully, we will succeed." To be sure, this entry is qualified thus: “although regarded by some as a loose ustorage, now widely current." But Guralnik es explained that a dictionary is not sup-

posed to make or uphold rules, but to record the language as it is currently used by the knowledgeable public.

“AS A RULE, NEW WORDS or usages become established if they are useeful," Guralnik said. "They tend to become obsolete if they are not useful. Hopefully is useful, just as useful as frankly, which we use in the same way."

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This is not to say, of course, that the Lexicographers are always happy about the new words they put in their ...dictionary.

"We held off on image in the sense that advertising had created it, hoping that it would go away," Guralnik said. "But it didn't, so in this printing we in*cluded it."

It is included as meaning No. 7 for

the noun and defined as "the total impression created by a person, company, nation, etc., as a result of practices, policies, etc."

EVEN THOUGH IT WAS not easy to define, because of shifting nuances of meaning, the editors included camp, which they classify as slang, originally homosexual jargon, and define as "banality, mediocrity, artifice, ostentation, etc., so extreme as to amuse or have a perversely sophisticated appeal." Camp is also in as an adjective.

An interesting new entry is funky, the adjective used in jazz to mean “hav-. ing an earthy quality or style derived from early blues." This originally was a Negro argot word meaning literally "smelly," and hence "musty," "earthy." This, the editors believe, came from the word funk, now obsolete, meaning "smell," "smoke." And that probably came from the French dialect word funkier, meaning "to smoke," which came from the vulgate Latin word fumicare, which came from the classical Latin fumigare, from which we also have our word fumigate.

Swing has made the dictionary in its recently new slang meaning "to be hip, or informed, sophisticated, etc." Other new slang entries include kook, "a person regarded as silly, eccentric, crazy, etc."; kookie or kooky, the adjective; fink, “any person regarded as contemptible, obnoxious, etc."; and fag, "a male homosexual."

And not as slang, but as colloquial, the editors have recognized fun as an adjective, meaning "intended for, or giving pleasure or amusement." You may now say "It was a fun movie," and give the New World as your reference if any. one questions you.