New words – 5 August 2019

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mommune noun [C]
UK /ˈmɒm.juːn/ US /ˈmɑː.mjuːn/
a group of mothers who live together with their children, sharing possessions and responsibilities

And so, more by accident than design, the women hit on a new domestic set-up: the “mommune” … . And for the next two years, the three of them and their six children shared their lives: Vicky in the spare room, Nicola a weekend resident and daily visitor. “We were a family,” Janet says. “We went to the supermarket together, cooked together, ate together, shared childcare. Our parents met.” The children, she adds, “became like siblings”.
[www.theguardian.com, 29 September 2018]

mumsplainer noun [C]
UK /ˈmʌm.spleɪnəʳ/  or momsplainer US /ˈmɑːm.spleɪnɚ/
a mother who gives unwanted advice or explains something about pregnancy, childbirth etc. to someone, often a pregnant woman or new parent, that he or she already understands

Just wondering… Is ‘mumsplain’ a word…. My gripe with this particular mumsplainer is she ONLY interacts with me when it is to criticise.
[twitter.com, 3 April 2017]

birth striker noun [C]
UK /ˌbɜːθ.ˈstraɪ.kəʳ/ US /ˌbɝːθ.ˈstraɪ.kɚ/
a woman who chooses not to have children because she is concerned about the world’s population being too big

My friend … is another “birth striker”, deciding when she was about 21 that she didn’t want to have children. “At the time lots of friends and family told me that as I got older, the biological clock would start ticking,” she recalls. “But actually the opposite has happened. The older I’ve got the more my decision has solidified. There are now a lot of wider issues that I’m passionate about in terms of the planet and climate change that have confirmed that decision for me.”
[www.telegraph.co.uk, 21 April 2019]

About new words

3 thoughts on “New words – 5 August 2019

  1. Gisela Zunino

    I think most words should be added to the dictionary even if we haven’t heard them a lot. Quite frequently I learn new words because I’m looking up another word. So, the more words a dictionary has, the better, especially an online one that doesn’t need to be printed.

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