What’s trending?

Well, it’s January 30^th, and I am just now getting to my New Year’s blog post although I’ve been thinking about it for a while.  I would have titled it “What’s New?” but since I’m writing about new words and expressions, I’m using one of them: “trending.”  Once again, a perfectly good noun has been made into a sloppy verb.  Along the lines of trending, is the expression “status update.”  This is a result of social media, specifically Facebook.  As far as I understand it, a status update tells your FB friends where you are or how you are or what you are doing.  Here’s my status update:  I’m waiting for my friends to arrive on a rainy afternoon in Delray.  Fascinating, isn’t it?

Two other new words for me in 2013 are “selfie” and “photo bomb.”  Now, I emphasize that they are new to me but may not be new to you!  Even my 3-year-old grandson knows how to take a selfie with his mother’s cell phone.  A photo bomb occurs when a posed picture is being taken and someone deliberately pops into the background in an amusing or annoying way.

In Florida this year, I learned about a new fish in our local restaurants, “Branzino.”  Branzino is also known as European Sea Bass.  It is among the most popular fish from the Mediterranean Sea. So I guess it's not very fresh unless it is also caught off Florida's shores.  Its mild flavor takes on the taste of the sauce in which it is cooked.

“Paddle boarding” is a cross between surfing and kayaking.  People can do this on a calm ocean or on the Intracoastal Waterway.  They look as if they are standing on a surfboard and paddling with a long- handled paddle.

I learned about “baby moon” from some of the 10 people I know who had babies last year.  It is a last child-free trip for the parents before the first baby arrives.  Wish I’d known about that one 36+ years ago!

“Urban chickens” are regular chickens who live in a city and are raised for their eggs.  I saw some of them when visiting my son and his family in the Ballard section of Seattle last year.  Thank goodness that my son has a fenced in yard to keep the urban chickens out.  The chickens roam the neighborhood looking for food.  How rude!

The next two words or expressions I first heard about in 2014: “Bridgegate” and “Polar vortex” have been in the news so recently that they hardly need explanation.  What is interesting to me, is that the derivation of “Bridgegate” is probably another political scandal “Watergate” which is actually the name of a Washington, DC hotel.

 What new words or expressions did you learn in 2013?  Please share!