Web site launches lexicon for modern-day dilemmas





"The DailyCandy Lexion"



Have you ever looked for a word to describe an everyday awkward, embarrassing or just plain funny situation when the dictionary won't do?

DailyCandy.com, a web site that provides daily e-mails about trends targeted to young urban women has launched a book full of words to describe everything from drunk instant messaging "drimming" to a group of undesirable sycophants or "nontourage".

The words in the book titled "The DailyCandy Lexicon: Words That Don't Exist but Should," were created and compiled by a team of the web site's editors -- a group of young, single or single-in-spirit women living in the city -- since 2001, when they realized the words they were making up might be of interest to others and began to publish them on online.

"The lexicon started because we all communicate by IM (instant messaging) and in communicating about say last night's make-out session at the bar, there's no word, so we found that Websters was limited," Brooke Siegel, the site's Miami editor and one of the book's main authors, said in an interview.

The word they came up with was "restaur-romp."

Siegel added that the need for slang lexicons arose because conventional language has not yet caught up with technology.

"In this day and age language is becoming more brief whether it's because more of us are communicating via IM or text message or e-mail," she said.

"So we end up with things like "OMG" and "LOL" that now my dad says ... We wanted the language to evolve with the trend."

你是否曾想找一个词来描述日常生活中遇到的尴尬、难堪或搞笑的情形，但在字典中又找不到这样的词？

“每日糖果网”（DailyCandy.com）最近出版了一本汇集此类疑难杂词的书，书中囊括了诸如“醉酒短信”（“drimming”）、“马屁精”（“nontourage”）等各种五花八门的词汇。该网站专门向都市年轻女性提供每日时尚资讯的电子邮件。

这本书叫做《每日糖果词典：应该存在却不存在的词》，由该网站的编辑团队编撰。这本词汇书的编撰工作从2001年开始，当时网站的一群单身或内心孤独的年轻女编辑意识到，她们自创的一些词也许会让其他人感兴趣，所以开始将它们陆续发到网上。

该书的主要编写者之一、来自迈阿密的布鲁克・西格尔在采访中说：“我们之所以有这样的想法，是因为现在人们都使用即时信息（IM）沟通，比如你想表达昨晚和某人在酒吧调情，似乎就找不到一个合适的词，所以看来韦氏词典也不够用。”

对于上述情形，该词典提供的词是“restaur-romp”。

西格尔说，之所以出现对这种俚语词汇的需求，是因为传统的语言没能跟上科技的发展。

她说：“如今，由于人们越来越多地使用即时信息、短信和电子邮件等方式进行交流，语言也变得越来越简略。”

“现在连我老爸都在说‘OMG(噢，我的天啊)’和‘LOL（狂笑）’……我们希望语言也能够‘与时俱进’。”

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