Binge-watching has become so ubiquitous in our lives that the term has been added to the dictionary.
Merriam-Webster added “binge-watch”—defined as a transitive verb, meaning, “to watch many or all episodes of (a TV series) in rapid succession”—to its pages today, along with one thousand other terms, part of an annual update to its pages.
The word may have been popularized in reference to Netflix $NFLX and other streaming-video apps like Hulu in the 2000s, but it dates back to the 1990s.
Ben Zimmer at Visual Thesaurus found instances of the term “binge watch” on forum posts by fans of the TV show The X $TWTR-Files back in 1996—about ten years before Netflix starting streaming video. It was used to describe marathon viewing of the science-fiction drama, playing on the term “binge” and its other iterations, like “binge-eating” and “binge-drinking.”
Merriam-Webster says the term was coined in 2003, perhaps referring to when it entered into popular, mainstream media use. That year, reporter Brill Bundy used it to describe ”watching an entire season’s worth of a series in a couple of sittings.”
Terms added to the dictionary last year, Quartz’s Thu-Huong Ha reported, included internet slang such as “FOMO”, or fear of missing out, and “ICYMI”, or in case you missed it, as well as 2,000 other words, such as “revenge porn” and “trigger warning”.
This year’s slate doesn’t describe using technology as much as it describes the behavioral and societal changes technology has brought on.
Some of the new terms from Merriam-Webster include:
Other notable new terms include:
