If there's one thing that suggests marijuana is going mainstream, it's very likely the fact that two marijuana terms have topped Oxford Dictionary's Top Words of the Year (the shortlist): 'Vape' came in at No. 1–here's an excerpt from the OD's announcement:
"18 November 2014, Oxford, UK:
Today Oxford Dictionaries announces vape as its international Word of the Year 2014. The Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year is a word or expression that has attracted a great deal of interest during the year to date. Language research conducted by Oxford Dictionaries editors reveals that use of the word vape in 2014 has more than doubled compared to 2013."
And "budtenders" made it onto the OD's Words of the Year shortlist. (The list is presented in alphabetical order, so it's not clear where it fell on the list.) Here's the excerpt from the OD's announcement:
"budtender, noun:
A person whose job is to serve customers in a cannabis dispensary or shop.
The use and sale of cannabis is illegal under US federal law, but in the late 1990s various states began to legalize medical use of the drug, and in 2012 Colorado and Washington became the first states to legalize recreational use, joined in November 2014 by Alaska and Oregon. These changes in the law have led to changes in the lexicon; one new word that has arisen in US English is budtender, from bud (slang for marijuana) + tender (as inbartender). While not yet a familiar term in the general vocabulary of English, it is a widely recognized designation within the legal cannabis industry."
Read the entire Oxford Dictionary announcement here.
