Fluffernutter: a sandwich made with peanut butter and marshmallow crème between two slices of white sandwich bread.
In the event you’re from the Northeast, chances are you’ll be acquainted with the candy “delicacy” often called fluffernutter. Whereas the sandwich is hottest within the New England space (it was invented in Massachusetts within the second decade of the twentieth century), its affect and prevalence have unfold all through the nation over the previous century. In Los Angeles, you’ll discover a deep-fried model with bananas at three of Antonia Lofaso’s eating places (Black Market Liquor Bar, Dama and Scopa Italian Roots). The Little Fish pop-up in Echo Park has been recognized to serve a fluffernutter for dessert.
However the phrase fluffernutter didn’t formally enter the Merriam-Webster dictionary till October, together with 455 different new phrases.
New phrases usually replicate the large tales of the yr or notable modifications in our tradition. The 2021 phrase of the yr is “vaccine,” preceded by “pandemic” in 2020, each testaments to a horrible period.
Different phrases — clearly — take longer.
Like all additions to this dictionary, fluffernutter began as a “quotation,” a report of kinds that features context and supply, which is added to a searchable database. The phrase was added to that database in 1961 after an editor cited the phrase‘s use in an commercial. Over time, extra Merriam-Webster editors watched for its utilization, contemplating the phrase for inclusion in upcoming editions of the dictionary. However fluffernutter was rejected for inclusion in 1980, and once more in 1983, 1993 and 2003, earlier than lastly reaching dictionary phrase standing this yr.
“It is a phrase that took its personal candy time moving into the dictionary, nevertheless it additionally exhibits that the method is similar for each phrase,” Merriam-Webster editor at massive Peter Sokolowski mentioned throughout a current name. “We all the time search for three fundamental standards: widespread utilization, long-term utilization and significant utilization. After we say long-term and widespread use, there isn’t a particular quantity, however there’s a type of essential mass that must be accrued.”
The phrase COVID-19 was added to the dictionary simply 34 days after its coinage.
Sokolowski is a part of a small crew of about 25 individuals who work all day, each day on the dictionary. If he will get excited a couple of new phrase, there isn’t a nice announcement to his colleagues. As a substitute, he finds 5 or 6 or possibly even 10 examples of that phrase, drafts a fast definition and enters it into a big shared doc to be checked out when the crew is contemplating phrases for brand new releases.
“It’s a method of getting issues began and permitting a phrase to develop,” Sokolowski mentioned, clearly enthusiastic about what should be one of many fascinating rituals within the reference-book world. “We additionally must make the ultimate name, which is the one actual govt resolution — when to place it in, as soon as it has been utilized by many individuals in lots of locations.”
The crew is constructed like a college school (and I can’t cease fixating on the truth that a comparatively small group makes these essential, albeit seemingly random at occasions, selections concerning what makes it into the dictionary and when). Some members could also be particularly proficient in science, math, physics, linguistics or music. At one level, there was an artwork historian, a biographer and a geographer on employees. However there isn’t a particular skilled who works on just one class of phrase. And there’s no Gordon Ramsay analyzing food-related phrases to find out what makes the lower. In contemplating a meals phrase, the crew would possibly take citations from restaurant menus, restaurant evaluations and on-line recipes under consideration.
“The specialties are essential on our finish, however we hope you don’t discover it,” Sokolowski mentioned. “We wish a variety of academic backgrounds and each type of background on employees to make definitions which are for everyone.”
This yr, the crew believed that fluffernutter had lastly reached the required essential mass. The phrase joined 9 different food-related additions, together with ghost kitchen, curbside pickup, curbside supply, dine-in and air fryer. As a bunch, these phrases are an apparent reflection of higher socioeconomic change, byproducts of the pandemic and the restaurant shutdown of 2020 that left everybody ordering takeout and supply, eager for dine-in and googling air fryer recipes for months.
Surprises on the food-word listing? Goetta and wiener roast. A wiener roast, I hope, is self-explanatory. However I needed to search for goetta. Are you acquainted with the fried patties comprised of meat, oats, onions and spices? The flat, brown meat rectangle hash-brown look-alikes, which had been launched to the U.S. by German immigrants within the nineteenth century, are common in Cincinnati — and one other instance of a slow-moving development within the dictionary world.
Much more shocking was the addition of horchata and chicharron in 2021, two phrases which have seemingly ceaselessly been a part of the Southern California vernacular. As an Angeleno, it’s onerous for me to imagine that horchata and chicharron solely now reached widespread, long-term and significant utilization, alongside fluffernutter, particularly when the dictionary dates the primary recognized utilization of chicharron to 1845. However, then, I grew up making frequent household journeys to Olvera Avenue.
“With out query, meals phrases are the best borrowings of phrases from overseas languages within the final 20 to 25 years,” Sokolowski mentioned. “Over 100 years in the past, we had the inflow of French haute delicacies like beef Bourguignon and coq au vin, however now we’ve got phrases like horchata, which you’d be acquainted with if you happen to traveled to Latin America or if you happen to eat often in Mexican eating places. Including them makes them naturalized residents of the English language.”
In 2019, halloumi, matcha, concasse, cidery, meadery, chana, royal icing, tallboy and quaffer had been added. The years prior, avo, coquito, dragon fruit, flight (because it pertains to tastings), meals financial institution, gochujang, guac, hangry, hophead, iftar, marg, mise en place, mocktail, quaffable, crimson bush tea, Wagyu, zoodle and zuke made the lower.
(Zoodle and guac made the lower earlier than chicharron and horchata? I blame Chipotle and social media.)
In response to Merriam-Webster’s personal “look-up reputation” on its web site, goetta is within the prime 27% of phrases, chicharron is within the prime 14% and fluffernutter is within the prime 8%. Widen this linguistic reputation contest to Google, and also you’ll discover that fluffernutter nets 449,000 search outcomes, goetta has 131,000 and chicharron racks up 45.7 million. I’ll let the numbers communicate for themselves.
“We’re in search of the second when folks reply to this as an English phrase, but in addition, if it’s one thing you’re not acquainted with and others are, then possibly you ought to be,” Sokolowski mentioned. “The notion of issues as new or overseas modifications over time.”
I requested Sokolowski what different meals phrases could be coming quickly. He pointed me to a piece of the Merriam-Webster web site dedicated to phrases the editors are watching. However there may be one particularly that Sokolowski has his eye on.
“Orange wine, and it’s nearly overdue,” he mentioned.
It’s.
