https://twitter.com/americandialect/status/1611699585193508864

The American Dialect Society, in its 33rd annual words-of-the-year vote, selected the suffix “-ussy” as the Word of the Year for 2022. More than two hundred attendees took part in the deliberations and voting, joining both in person and virtually, in a hybrid event hosted in conjunction with the Linguistic Society of America’s annual meeting.

Presiding at the Jan. 6 voting session was Ben Zimmer, chair of the ADS New Words Committee and language columnist for the Wall Street Journal.

“The selection of the suffix -ussy highlights how creativity in new word formation has been embraced online in venues like TikTok,” Zimmer said. “The playful suffix builds off the word pussy to generate new slang terms. The process has been so productive lately on social media sites and elsewhere that it has been dubbed -ussification.”

For more on the -ussy phenomenon, see the Vulture article by Bethy Squires, “We Asked Linguists Why People Are Adding -Ussy to Every Word”: “Riffing off ‘bussy’ (a portmanteau of ‘boy’ and ‘pussy’), now everything is a cat or a cavity. A calzone is a pizzussy. A wine bottle has a winussy.” See also Michael Dow’s scholarly paper, “A corpus study of phonological factors in novel English blends.”

5 points

pizzussy :data-laughing:

permalink
report
reply
16 points

Just imagine the confusion in a few years when this slang is old and busted and nobody knows why it’s in the dictionary.

All your base are belong to us. Democracy, whiskey, sexy!

permalink
report
reply

a portmanteau of ‘boy’ and ‘pussy’

revisionism

permalink
report
reply
2 points

We all know bussy is the original term. Pussy is the real portmanteau.

permalink
report
parent
reply
12 points

bussy is butt pussy

permalink
report
parent
reply

damn straight

or gay, your choice

permalink
report
parent
reply
30 points

dialectussy

permalink
report
reply
20 points

I think I dislike this. Like, does anybody actually talk that way? Online maybe, but is descriptivism meant to capture written or spoken language? Also, to what extent is the value of a descriptivist perspective on language degraded by online spaces in which a relative minority of weirdos are mutating words and phrases at rates heretofore unseen in humans?

permalink
report
reply

I think I dislike this. Like, does anybody actually talk that way?

zoomers are lacking enough in social skills that they use words like this IRL

(I have heard zoomers say stuff like “bicyclecels” and adding “-cel” as a suffix to stuff IRL)

permalink
report
parent
reply

bicyclecels

That’s so not Bichael-pilled, and doesn’t belong on an epic personal transit arc

permalink
report
parent
reply
18 points

That’s not “lacking in social skills” that’s establishing a new generational vernacular

permalink
report
parent
reply

Nope, zoomers are a mistake

permalink
report
parent
reply
8 points

me and my mates use -ussy offline all the time, and it was in that lizzo song

permalink
report
parent
reply
21 points

Sarcasm and jokes are still language

permalink
report
parent
reply
16 points
*

A dialect doesn’t have to be widely used to warrant being catalogued like this. This is fine, they could have easily just been pissy nerds over it lamenting how them youngins are ruining the language.

permalink
report
parent
reply

memes

!memes@hexbear.net

Create post

dank memes

Rules:

  1. All posts must be memes and follow a general meme setup.

  2. No unedited webcomics.

  3. Someone saying something funny or cringe on twitter/tumblr/reddit/etc. is not a meme. Post that stuff in !the_dunk_tank@www.hexbear.net, it’s a great comm.

  4. Va*sh posting is haram and will be removed.

  5. Follow the code of conduct.

  6. Tag OC at the end of your title and we’ll probably pin it for a while if we see it.

  7. Recent reposts might be removed.

  8. Tagging OC with the hexbear watermark is praxis.

  9. No anti-natalism memes. See: Eco-fascism Primer

Community stats

  • 26

    Monthly active users

  • 17K

    Posts

  • 143K

    Comments