Words by Declan Whelan // Image by Jeremy Deputat
Slim recently celebrated the 20th anniversary of his breakthrough album The Slim Shady LP and with this win, the rap veteran continues his hot-streak.
The term stan, coined by Eminem back in 2000, has had a bit of an online revival in the last few years and usually applies to committed (bordering obsessive) fans of artists, tv series, films, etc. As of today, the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a stan as “an extremely or excessively enthusiastic and devoted fan”, while to stan is “to exhibit fandom to an extreme or excessive degree: to be an extremely devoted and enthusiastic fan of someone or something”.
Along with stan, Merriam-Webster have updated a further 640 new words including a new definition for snowflake meaning ‘someone who is overly sensitive’, and buzzy which is ‘causing or characterised by a lot of speculative or excited talk or attention (that is, generating buzz)’. If you’re so inclined, you can see more of the weird and wonderful new words on the Merriam-Webster website. Here’s hoping more rap slang makes the crossover from Urban Dictionary to the ‘real’ thing.
