New words: good or bad?

New words added to Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary recently include: frenemy, webisode, locavore, staycation, vlog and waterboarding.

We’ve all seen these words used recently, right? But do they really belong in a dictionary? It made me wonder about the borderline between slang and common usage. Being the geek that I am, I looked up some definitions, and apparently slang is used by a subset of native speakers, while colloquialisms are known to most native speakers.

Based on that general distinction, I’m still not sure that all of these words belong. I never use “vlog” or “webisode.” Do you? I wasn’t even sure what “locavore” meant until I read the story about the new words. And that’s bad, considering I live in Northern California where this concept has been prominent for decades, albeit with a different name.

I’m less than thrilled that we’ve now got “waterboarding” in general usage. What a wonderful legacy for this generation to add to the English language. What do people learning English as second language think when they hear or learn words like this?

I like the idea that the language is evolving and dictionaries are keeping up with changes, but I also wonder which words are falling out of general usage to the point that people no longer know the meanings or how to use them properly? Why is it that we’ve got words like “frenemy” when half the population can’t seem to figure out when to use “their,” “there” or “they’re” properly?

What’s your opinion of this new crop of now official words? Are there any you think should have made it and didn’t? Should tech-focused words be considered as mainstream usage or remain slang/jargon? Does it matter? And when is spell check going to catch up?