‘Fluffernutter,’ ‘wiener roast’: New dictionary food terms highlight pandemic eating
The pandemic has changed life in ways we can’t even fully conceptualize yet. As we all entered a world of virtual classrooms and Zoom happy hours, the uncertainty of the world around us made a lot of unfamiliar things suddenly central to our lives. It’s no surprise that those words and concepts have now made their way into the dictionary.
Merriam-Webster has announced the addition of 455 new words and meanings to Merriam-Webster.com. Many of these words reflect the changing world around us, from vaccine passports to digital nomads, and a bunch are related to food and food prep, which in itself changed in many ways during the pandemic.
New food-related words include the always-fun fluffernutter, which is a popular sandwich made with peanut butter and marshmallow, and the very trendy air fryer. Both got a lot of use and appreciation during the pandemic, as did the concept of ghost kitchens.
Ghost kitchens gathered a lot of steam over the pandemic, as many restaurants were shuttered and virtual restaurants offered an option of delivery-only menus that would be prepared in satellite kitchens. Curbside delivery and pickup was also a mainstay of the pandemic, as many restaurants switched to drive-thru, takeout and delivery models, and that concept too has made its way into the dictionary this year.
While there was a wide range of words added to the dictionary this year that reflect the pandemic, here are the new food-related words and how Merriam-Webster defines them:
Fluffernutter: A sandwich made with peanut butter and marshmallow crème between two slices of white sandwich bread.
Horchata: A cold sweetened beverage made from ground rice or almonds and usually flavorings such as cinnamon or vanilla.
Chicharron: A small piece of pork belly or pig skin that is fried and eaten usually as a snack.
Goetta: Meat (such as pork) mixed with oats, onions, and spices and fried in the form of a patty.
Air fryer: An airtight, usually small electrical appliance for quick cooking of foods by means of convection currents circulated rapidly by a fan.
Ghost kitchen: A commercial cooking facility used for the preparation of food consumed off the premises — called also cloud kitchen, dark kitchen.
Curbside pickup/curbside delivery: A service in which purchased items are brought to customers who wait in their automobiles in a designated area near the establishment.
Wiener roast: A gathering at which wieners are cooked over a fire or grill and eaten.
Dine-in: Of, relating to, or selling food or beverages consumed on the premises.
Flash freeze: To freeze something (such as food) quickly to minimize the formation of ice crystals.
Carnitas: Small chunks or strips of meat and especially pork that are fried or roasted until crisp and are sometimes served in a burrito or taco.
Street food: Prepared food of a kind that is typically sold to customers on a street or sidewalk and that is often designed to be carried and eaten while walking.
Tuile: A French wafer-like cookie made chiefly with flour, egg whites, sugar, and butter and shaped while warm into a curved or rolled form.
Baking chocolate: Unsweetened chocolate that is used especially as an ingredient in baking.
Everything (as in the seasoning): Topped with a mixture of seasonings that typically includes seeds (such as poppy seeds and sesame seeds), dried garlic, dried onion, and salt.
According to Merriam-Webster, a word gets added to the dictionary “when it is used by many people who all agree that it means the same thing.” That is to say it has entered mainstream life, and is used in conversation and on social media. The alternative may be a word that perhaps has meaning to a group of friends or a family but isn’t being used by the population at large. The word needs to be widespread, and in the face of a global pandemic, there were many words that, while they may have existed before, became more commonly used and understood.
Related: 2020 was the year of carryout, curbside and cooking — a lot of cooking.
But in the face of a lockdown where many people changed how they eat and how they dine, it's clear that experience has influenced our words and how we use them. “Words are added to the dictionary based on widespread use,” Peter Sokolowski, editor at large at Merriam-Webster, told TODAY in an email. “If a word is used in many publications and by many writers with the same meaning, it is added to the dictionary.”
The "new" words are a mix of terms that have been around for a while, and some that are being looked at for the first time or in a new way. “As with all groups of newly added entries, some may seem familiar and some may seem very new — every term that enters the dictionary does so at its own pace,” said Sokolowski. “We look for evidence of a word's use in published writing, which explains why a term like fluffernutter, which we date to 1961 for its first known use, took so long: it was an informal and regional term that was spoken much more than it was written (and published),” said Sokolowski.
Many of us spent a lot of time baking in the past year. “For a term like baking chocolate, the limitless space of the online dictionary allows us to add compound terms that might have been determined to be self-evident in the past, in part to save precious space on the printed page,” said Sokolowski, who explained that pandemic-related terms were a bit different. “For ghost kitchen and curbside, clearly the fast adoption and heavy coverage in published media accelerated their acceptance in the language and entry into the dictionary,” said Sokolowski.
Here's hoping that next year's dictionary additions reflect a whole lot more dining out and trying new in-person experiences. For now, we're pretty happy to have air fryers and ghost kitchens.
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