Language

What Makes a New Word Successful?

Most new words live tragically — or comically — short lives, while others are surprising survivors.

As slang terms go, nerf is old enough to qualify for Social Security benefits. Its first appearance in print was documented in 1953, when it was used by auto racers to mean “to nudge something with a bumper in passing and knock it off course.” In 1970, NERF — that’s the official brand styling, although it’s not an acronym — was registered as a trademark for soft foam toys designed for indoor play. By 1995, nerf had been embraced by a different set of indoor players: In video gaming, to nerf something or someone — a weapon, a character — is to reduce its effectiveness, just as a NERF basketball is less powerful than the real deal.

Until September 2023, however, you couldn’t find the video-game sense of nerf in Merriam-Webster’s respected online dictionary. When it finally made the cut, along with 689 other newly added words and definitions, the company heralded the inclusion in an official announcement. “We’re very excited by this new batch of words,” said Peter Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster’s editor-at-large. “We hope there is as much insight and satisfaction in reading them as we got from defining them.”