Merle Benter
Leibniz Institute for the German Language (IDS), Department of Lexical Studies
Member of: WG2, WG3
FEATURED NEOLOGISM:
The neologism that has become my favorite in the German language in recent years is the English adjective ‘cringe’. It describes a feeling of ‘second-hand embarrassment’, when you see someone showing awkward behavior or making a situation awkward – it often (metaphorically) goes along with the hairs standing up on the back of your neck, goose bumps and shaking. ‘Cringe’ fills a gap in the German vocabulary, as there is no comparable word to describe the illustrated feeling. The adjective has entered the German lexicon via social media and quickly became popular in the youth scene. It even secured first place in the 2021 ‘Youth Word of the Year’ competition. After some initial resistance, ‘cringe’ has also conquered the hearts of many older generations – I’ve even heard my 62-year-old mom use it (definitely more than once). Personally, I can now hardly imagine life without having the opportunity of calling people, situations and sometimes even myself ‘cringe’.
I have studied General Linguistics at the University of Siegen (Germany), focusing on the morphological and syntactic structures of the German language system. After graduating, I knew that I wanted to stay in academia and widen my knowledge in these and other areas; therefore, I applied for a position as a research assistant (combined with a PhD position) at the Leibniz-Institut für Deutsche Sprache (Institute for the German Language, IDS) in Mannheim (Germany). I have been working there as a research assistant in the department of lexical studies for more than two years now and have been introduced to and trained in lexicographic work for the compilation of a new online dictionary of German neologisms. As part of my dissertation, I am doing research on the morphological embedding of (neological) English verb stems in the German inflectional paradigm. If you’d like more information, please have a look at my personal website: https://perso.ids-mannheim.de/seiten/benter.html.
