Macquarie Dictionary Just Made ‘Menty-B’ and ‘Hate-Follow’ Actual Words

Spoken like a true intellectual™.

Internet slang is literary, folks. The nonsensical ramblings in TikTok comments are ushering in a new age of language, and it’s wild.

Every year, The Macquarie Dictionary curates a shortlist of trendy new words. A vote has now been opened to the people to decide ‘Word of the Year’.

And there’s a lot of wacky choices which we’ve conveniently categorised for you. You can view the full shortlist here.

The COVID classics.

There are the words we’re sick of hearing, like ‘Delta’. Then there’s the more interesting ones, like ‘Shadow pandemic’— relating to “the stresses and restrictions of the COVID-19 pandemic”.

My personal fave is ‘Strollout’. It’s a colloquial term referring to “the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccination program in Australia, with reference to the perceived lack of speed.” That’s one for Scomo to mull over.

The internet speak.

I can relate to this one: ‘hate-follow’— “to link oneself to (a site on a social network) even though one dislikes or disagrees with the content being shared”. *Ahem* the Kardashians *ahem*.

Then there’s ‘Wokescold’, which we can now use to officially describe the calling out of people who are being outright prejudiced and discriminatory. Don’t make me wokescold you!

‘Menty-b’ is proving to be most popular. There’s something so gentle and endearing about the word being used to describe mental breakdowns. Adding this to my personal vocab.

im calling mental breakdown a "menty b" from now on

— thrivin (@challesalleist) November 16, 2021

The outright questionable words.

Uh, apparently ‘Dump cake’ is a thing? I’ll forgive you for not knowing what on earth this means. The Dictionary is defining it as “a cake which is prepared by combining the ingredients directly in the cake tin or dish in which it is to be baked”. K, that sounds a lot better than what I suspected.

You can vote that out, and ‘Menty-B’ in, here. For the sake of representing humanity at its best.

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