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Every year, about 1,000 new words are added to the Oxford English Dictionary.
每年有1000个新词加到牛津英文字典当中。
Where do they come from, and how do they make it into our everyday lives?
它们从哪里来，它们又是如何融入我们的日常生活的？
With over 170,000 words currently in use in the English language, it might seem we already have plenty.
目前在使用的英文单词有超过17万个，可能看起来已经足够多了。
Yet, as our world changes, new ideas and inventions spring forth, and science progresses,
但随着世界在变化，新的点子和新的发明不断涌现，科技在进步，
our existing words leave gaps in what we want to express
现存的词汇已经不足于表达我们的想法，
and we fill those gaps in several ingenious, practical, and occasionally peculiar ways.
我们开始用一些巧妙的、实践中的、偶尔也是很特别的方法来弥补。
One way is to absorb a word from another language.
一种是从其他语言中吸收。
English has borrowed so many words over its history that nearly half of its vocabulary comes directly from other languages.
历史上，英语一直从其他语言中吸收词汇，几乎一半的词汇都是外来的。
Sometimes, this is simply because the thing the word describes was borrowed itself.
有时，这仅仅是因为这个词所形容的东西本身就是外来的。
Rome and France brought legal and religious concepts, like altar and jury, to Medieval England,
罗马和法国给中世纪的英格兰带来了法律和宗教概念，比如“祭坛”和“陪审团”，
while trade brought crops and cuisine, like Arabic coffee, Italian spaghetti, and Indian curry.
还有交换的农作物和美食，比如，阿拉伯的“咖啡”，意大利的“面条”和印度的“咖喱”。
But sometimes, another language has just the right word for a complex idea or emotion, like naiveté machismo, or schadenfreude.
但是有时候，外来语言更容易表达复杂的思想或情感，比如“天真”、“男子气概”或“幸灾乐祸”。
Scientists also use classical languages to name new concepts.
科学家也用传统语言来命名新概念。
Clone, for example, was derived from the Ancient Greek word for twig to describe creating a new plant from a piece of the old.
例如克隆，来自于古希腊词“枝杈”，描述新枝从老枝中创造出来。
And today, the process works both ways, with English lending words like software to languages all over the world.
如今，这一过程成为了双向的，英文向全世界的语言输出了诸如“软件”这样的词语。
Another popular way to fill a vocabulary gap is by combining existing words that each convey part of the new concept.
填补词汇空缺的另一种流行的方法，是将每个表达新概念部分的现有词汇组合起来。
This can be done by combining two whole words into a compound word, like airport or starfish,
结合两个已知词汇来形成一个复合词，比如，“机场”，“海星”，
or by clipping and blending parts of words together, like spork, brunch, or internet.
或者剪切、混合部分词汇，如：“叉勺”，“早午餐”，“互联网”。
And unlike borrowings from other languages, these can often be understood the first time you hear them.
和其他外来词不同，这些词汇我们一听到就能马上明白它的意思。
And sometimes a new word isn't new at all. Obsolete words gain new life by adopting new meanings.
有时新词根本就不是新的。过时的词汇通过获取新定义，从而得到了重生。
Villain originally meant a peasant farmer, but in a twist of aristocratic snobbery
“恶棍”一词最初指的是农民，但后来演变成了一种贵族势利感，
came to mean someone not bound by the knightly code of chivalry and, therefore, a bad person.
意味着不受骑士精神约束的人，实际就是指一个坏人。
A geek went from being a carnival performer to any strange person to a specific type of awkward genius.
“极客”来自于狂欢节上的表演者，随后发展成有怪癖的人，直到意为古怪的天才。
And other times, words come to mean their opposite through irony, metaphor, or misuse,
另外一些时候，有些词通过反讽、隐喻或误用来表示相反的意思，
like when sick or wicked are used to describe something literally amazing.
比如说“sick”和“wicked”，都用来表达令人惊叹的。
But if words can be formed in all these ways,
但是如果词汇都是通过这些方法创造出来的，
why do some become mainstream while others fall out of use or never catch on in the first place?
为什么有些成为了主流，而另一些则不再被使用，或者从一开始就没有流行起来？
Sometimes, the answer is simple, as when scientists or companies give an official name to a new discovery or technology.
有时答案是显而易见的，比如说当科学家或公司给新发明或新技术定义了一个官方名字的时候。
And some countries have language academies to make the decisions.
一些国家有专门的语言学术机构来作出决定。
But for the most part, official sources like dictionaries only document current usage.
但大部分情况下，官方来源，比如字典，仅记录当前的词语含义。
New words don't originate from above,
新词汇不是来自官方，
but from ordinary people spreading words that hit the right combination of useful and catchy.
而是通过普通民众口耳相传的词汇，它们兼顾实用和朗朗上口的特性。
Take the word meme, coined in the 1970s by sociobiologist Richard Dawkins from the Ancient Greek for imitation.
比如“meme”这个词，20世纪70年代由社会学家理查德·道金斯创出，来自于古希腊词模仿。
He used it to describe how ideas and symbols propagate through a culture like genes through a population.
他用这个词来描述想法和符号如何通过文化来传播，就像基因在种群中延续一样。
With the advent of the Internet,
随着互联网的到来，
the process became directly observable in how jokes and images were popularized at lightning speed.
在笑话和图像如何以闪电般的速度广为传播中，这个过程变得更为直接可见。
And soon, the word came to refer to a certain kind of image.
很快，这个词就被用来指某种特定的图片。
So meme not only describes how words become part of language, the word is a meme itself.
“meme”不仅描述新词汇如何成为语言的一部分，“meme”也代表了自身。
And there's a word for this phenomenon of words that describe themselves: autological.
有一个词可以表示这种自我形容的现象：自体同源。
Not all new words are created equal.
不是所有新词都是生来平等的。
Some stick around for millennia, some adapt to changing times, and others die off.
有些能存在很久，有些能适应时代的变化，有些则会消亡。
Some relay information, some interpret it,
有些传递信息，有些解释信息，
but the way these words are created and the journey they take to become part of our speech
但这些词被创造的方式，以及它们成为我们日常用语的一部分所经历的历程，
tells us a lot about our world and how we communicate within it.
向我们传达了这个世界的许多信息，以及我们是如何在其中进行交流。
