New Words

Covered at Here & Now: The American Heritage Dictionaries add some new words. An excerpt from the story:

On updating the pronunciation of ‘harass’

“Harass, as you mentioned, is interesting in that in 1987, the panel was split as to whether it was pronounced HAIR-iss or huh-RASS and then in 2001, 70 percent favored huh-RASS, and just last year, 90 percent of the panel, that was their preferred form. So in 25 years, among the makeup of the panel that time, it’s gone from a 50/50 split to a 90/10 split. Casually, anecdotally, from listening to the news, it seems to me as well that newscasters are saying huh-RASS more than HAIR-iss.”