The Royal Academy of Language (RAE) has just released its most recent update to the Spanish dictionary and thus a list of 17 pages containing new words included in this reference text.

Among the words integrated are the English terms: alien (alien); au pair (person who works abroad, cares for children or does domestic work, in exchange for housing); balcony (jump into the pool from a hotel balcony); baguette (narrow and elongated bread); big data (data intelligence); cookie (small text file sent by a website and stored in the user’s browser); macguffin (argument that advances the plot even though it is not of great importance in itself); tear (someone who excels exceptionally at something), among others.

The expressions also stand out machirulo (which exhibits a sexist attitude), decarbonization, carbon footprint or energy poverty. For fans of the culinary arts there are sourdough (spontaneously fermented dough in bread making), cochifrito (goat, lamb or suckling pig cut into slices, boiled and then fried), grissini (crispy breadstick), Colin (usually cylindrical piece of bread, very thin and crispy), name calling (small, thin sheet of crusty bread.).

In music there is perreo and chunda-chunda (with a script or together).

In total there are 4,381 new developments, including new terms, new meanings of words that already existed, changes to articles, deletions. Another novelty presented for the document is the inclusion of the main synonyms and antonyms of Spanish, “a much-requested novelty,” the RAE said in a statement. (JO)