As self-proclaimed wordsmiths, Talk PR is excited about Merriam-Webster’s announcement of 100 new additions to the dictionary. Below are just a few of the new additions we found interesting.

Air quotes: gesture made by raising and flexing the index and middle fingers of both hands, used to call attention to a spoken word or expression.

Mental health day: day that an employee takes off from work to relieve stress or renew vitality.

Netroots: grassroots political activists who communicate via the Internet, especially by blogs.

Subprime 1: having or being an interest rate that is higher than a prime rate and is extended especially to low-income borrowers; 2: extending or obtaining a subprime loan.

Texas Hold ‘em: poker in which each player is dealt two cards face down and all players share five cards dealt face-up.

Webinar: live, online educational presentation during which participating viewers can submit questions and comments.

Wing nut: slang: one who advocates extreme measures or changes; radical.

According to Stevenson Swanson in a recent interview with the Raleigh News & Observer, the English language is approaching its millionth word. Swanson, a national correspondent for the Chicago Tribune’s New York office, says that English will have one million words by the end of the year.

“English is like an open language that absorbs every type of word from all different languages,” said Paul Payack, who runs Global Language Monitor, a Web-based language consulting business, and since its start in 1999, has an estimate of about 995,000 words in the English language.

Payack uses a series of mathematical formulas to track new words in online databases of newspapers, magazines and other Internet sites. Once a word has been spotted a certain number of times, Payack adds the word to his master lexicon. Payack believes that the English language is so large because it brings in words and phrases from other languages. Payack also notes that English newcomers make up words to express themselves, which are picked up by native speakers.

Many dictionary editors, such as Jesse Sheidlower of the Oxford English Dictionary, think that an accurate word count is impossible. Sheidlower feels that there are too many conditions on which you can or can’t count something as a word and that basing the number solely on how many people use a word is “nonsense… (because) people don’t agree on what a word is.”

Whether a truly accurate word count is possible or not, the number of words that have caught on in the English language is nearing one million. Who knows, when we reach that plateau, we may all be holding our blankies in Godzone talking to locavores about Billary.