Helicopter parents, noobs and brain candy

As a new year begins, you can’t help but look back on the one just passed: its gains and losses, its highs and lows, the memorable moments and those best forgotten.

So why not do the same for the words and terms that entered our lives – or at least the dictionaries – in 2011?* You can make your own mind up about which of those categories these words fall into, but – more to the point – can you pick the correct definition for each from the choices below?

Let us know how you got on. Have you used any of the terms? (We’ve already heard from a keen cricketer about an alternative meaning for one of them.) If not, will you be adding any of them to your vocabulary? And which ones (if any) are you hoping to forget long before the year is out?

* Words taken from 2011 entries in Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Concise Oxford English Dictionary and Collins English Dictionary

And if that’s put you in a quizzing mood, why not pit yourself against our fiendish spelling test?

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Author: Catie Holdridge

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Catie joined Emphasis in 2008 with an English literature and creative writing degree under her belt. Having researched and written dozens of articles for the Emphasis blog, she now knows more about the intricacies of effective professional writing than she ever thought possible.

She produced and co-wrote our online training programme, Emphasis 360, and these days oversees all the Emphasis marketing efforts. And she keeps office repartee at a suitably literary level.