Plant-based, pumpkin spice, oat milk — these are just a few of the new food-related words added to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary this year. While these words are hardly new to the vernacular (especially pumpkin spice — why did that take so long?), they are only now deemed to have the “clear and sustained evidence of use” required for dictionary inclusion.
There were six other food words, including birria (a Mexican dish of stewed meat seasoned especially with chili peppers), mojo (a sauce, marinade, or seasoning that is usually composed primarily of olive oil, garlic, citrus juice, and spices), and ras el hanout (a mixture of ground spices that is used in northern African cooking and includes coriander, ginger, turmeric, peppercorns, cumin, cinnamon, cardamom, cayenne pepper, and other spices).
In addition, there are a couple of new words that have moved from industry parlance to common use, namely, shrinkflation and supply chain.
