Recently, I’ve known several people who’ve celebrated their birthdays. In fact, I’m preparing to make my dog a special cake for her 13th birthday. I remembered a website my former manager sent about dates—Merriam-Webster’s Time Traveler. This site lists, by year, the first time words and phrases appeared in print. Just to make it interesting, I went back 100 years, and I was a little surprised with what was new to print in 1921. Here are some of the words I was surprised about because I thought they were fairly recent and some I just liked the sound of. I’m including the words and terms, the part of speech they are used for, and their definitions.
| Word | Part of Speech | Definition |
| booze cruise | noun | informal
a: a boat trip centered on the consumption or sale of alcohol b: a boat trip to a location where alcohol can be purchased inexpensively (because of lower taxes or no taxes) |
four-star |
adjective | of a superior degree of excellence, for example “a four-star French restaurant” |
| fusspot | noun | fussbudget
Synonyms: bellyacher, complainer, crybaby, fusser, griper, grumbler, sniveler, whiner |
| Herd mentality | noun | the tendency of the people in a group to think and behave in ways that conform with others in the group rather than as individuals |
| house trailer | noun | mobile home |
| microinjection | noun | injection under the microscope
specifically: injection by means of a micropipette into a tissue or a single cell |
| ouroboros | noun | a circular symbol that depicts a snake or dragon devouring its own tail and that is used especially to represent the eternal cycle of destruction and rebirth |
| pigboat | noun | submarine |
| roadholding | noun | chiefly British
the qualities of an automobile that tend to make it respond precisely to the driver’s steering |
| rubber check | noun | a check returned by a bank because of insufficient funds in the payer’s account |
| shih tzu | noun, often with initial capitalization | any of an old Chinese breed of toy dogs that have a square short unwrinkled muzzle, short muscular legs, and a long dense flowing coat |
Ouroboros
Pigboat class of submarine
Peppa Pigboat class of submarine
Shih tzu, aka “walking mop”
Kara Church
Pronouns: she/her/hers
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