Useful Tool for Contemporary & Urban Fiction Writers: The Urban Dictionary.

 Stand still long enough, and you'll be a witness to the constant change in the English language. Like water in a rushing river, it constantly swerves around rocks and fallen trees, creating new currents and eddies. If you're a writer of contemporary fiction, or urban fantasy, it's important to keep up with current slang and terminology.

So one of the tools to keep handy is the Urban Dictionary. Created and maintained by users of urban terminology, it's a fluid dictionary that is constantly expanded and redefined.

Contributors supply a word, its definition, and use it in a sentence. Readers rate the content by clicking on "thumbs up" or "thumbs down", depending on whether they agree with the use of the word.

Readers can sign up for a new word each day sent to their email. The archives are searchable alphabetically at the top of the web page. You can also search by images or, interestingly, by sounds.  Use the search box to look up any topic, or even look up a particular city, to find out what people are saying about it. Note: Be prepared to see quite a few misspellings on the site.

Here are a couple of definitions from the site you might enjoy:

Googleheimer's The condition where you think of something you want to Google, but by the time you get to your computer, you have forgotten what it was.

Writer's crap Derived from 'writer's cramp', writer's crap refers to a stage when one is only capable of writing utter crap.

Textually Frustrated When texting with someone over IM or SMS that takes too long to reply, leaving you waiting and frustrated.

Retard in aluminum foil  What a lady's knight in shining armor becomes when she really gets to know him.

Maybe we need a site like this just for writers? Have you got a good definition for something?

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