Don't worry if you don't understand any of the verbs in the above title: they are very recent additions to English vocabulary which have not yet gained wide currency even among native speakers (and may well never). On the basis of information drawn from a large corpus which is constantly being updated, HarperCollins Publishers have recently put out a book of this title explaining new English words such as 'moobs' for 'male boobs' (pardon my French!) or 'smirting' for flirting while smoking outside of offices or pubs. If you want to find out what those other verbs 'stooze' and 'krump' mean, the BBC news website will be happy to oblige. (While you're there, take a look at some of the links under 'See also', which are also about language, for instance about the meaning of the word 'lite' or about possible effects of texting -- sending text messages -- on one's linguistic skills.)
Incidentally, apart from words entering the language, words may also die out for a variety of reasons, for instance because the concepts they denote go out of fashion or even out of existence. Michael Quinion has just published a new book about this phenomenon: Gallimaufry: A hodgepodge of our vanishing vocabulary. As the end of the year is fast approaching, we are (as usual) running out of money for books, but sooner or later we will try to add both books to our collection. (On the plus side, the books The great Eskimo vocabulary hoax and Far from the madding gerund mentioned earlier in this blog have arrived and will soon be made accessible in the Linguistics seminar.)
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