The world of Twitter has brought about the implementation of the word ‘Adorkable’ into the Collins dictionary this year.
The word welds together both ‘adorable’ and ‘dork’, to mean ‘someone who is socially awkward or unfashionable but in an endearing way’.
The word came to life as a result of viewers of Zooey Deschanel’s hit comedy show ‘New Girl’, Zooey herself embodies the very meaning of adorkable in her role as Jessica, her charming geeky clumsiness and sometimes veiled, yet at other times deep perception and intelligence seem to echo the modern day personalities of our ever hipster-inspired population, where reading Hemingway and indulging in PacMan and Space Invaders is cooler than being sport-obsessed and into mainstream trends.
Now programming is being brought into the national curriculum, as our education evolves, so do our people and therefore our words, it’s a personal gripe of mine that the meaning of ‘literally’ has unfortunately evolved from its proper meaning ‘without exaggeration’ to a word that is simply used for emphasis! But what can we do, we change, once there was playing outside on the street all day, now there’s game consoles.
Perhaps the adorkable has evolved as a word quite rightly, although extremely Americanised, it does illustrate the modern population, surrounded with computers, gaming consoles, Twitter,Facebook and the like. Perhaps we are becoming more socially awkward, nerdy and downright adorkable!
By Kate Verity Blueman