New Words

One day last year my friends and I were sitting around talking about the new verbs we seemed to be using all of a sudden, "friend" being the most common. (as in "so-and-so friended me on facebook") It go me thinking about how new words are made and who makes them. The first time I heard "fantabulous" on TV recently I was a little surprised thinking, "Wait, that's my word! I made that one up! How did they know about that?" Or did I hear it from somewhere else? Maybe I made it up, maybe I didn't. It is logical to think thought that out of the millions of people in the world (and the U.S. in particular), someone else would come up with the same shortcuts and/or morphings of the language that I and my friends do. This article in USA Today online gives the "word of the year" according to the New Oxford Dictionary. And it started me thinking again, who makes language? The people or the media?