18 January 2018

Coined as a joke, on Twitter, in 2016, by Australian cartoonist Ben Ward, to describe an unknown person who rises quickly to fame through the internet then falls because of something unsavoury in their past, Macquarie Dictionary has named milkshake duck the Australian word of the year.

It's also in the American Dialect Society's top new words for 2017, but their winner was fake news. Interestingly, this expression was Macquarie Dictionary's top for 2016. 

It makes sense there be new words coined to describe something to do with the internet and of course, there are words in every language that don't have equivalents in other languages. Is the idea limited by the language or is it that that culture has no use for this concept?

English is forever changing with meanings often changing over time and welcoming new words and expressions. 

Read more about the word of the year here