My mom told me from as early as I can remember that “you aren’t human”. I’ve never quite fit the mold. There seems to be no box that can contain the entirety of the catastrophe that is me! In a world that struggles with identity and wanting to ‘fit in’ or figure out ‘who you are’ we are constantly inventing new labels and names for things.
Sometimes it is interesting to see where and when a term came into use and along these lines I was very intrigued when I found out that Merriam Webster had created a site called time traveler which allows you to check different years to see what terms were first used in print that year.
So, in honour of my birthday, I was eager to find out what terms were coined the year that I was born. What words and phrases did they have to create to attempt to define the abomination they were presented with when I graced the world with my presence?!
I was NOT disappointed! The world clearly took me seriously! There was an abundance of words created that year and most of them clearly had something to do with me!
The highlights of the list are as follows:
- attention deficit disorder
- autistic savant
- ditz
- dramedy
- generalized anxiety disorder
- major depressive disorder
- panic disorder
- Stockholm syndrome
- toxic shock syndrome
- logic bomb
- open mic
- improv
- swoopy
- snitty
- duck sauce
- pad thai
- lookism
And that wasn’t even the entire list! My year was a big year! Take that 2007 and your sorry list of six words! (additive manufacturing, hashtag, listicle, netbook, sharing economy and tweep)
So as we all know, I am so spectacular there is never going to be a single term that will describe me in my entirety but I’m going to give mad props to the person who coined the term “eye candy” the year I was born!
~Elena <3
