Words are added to the English language every day, as people invent them in speech and in writing; some catch on and are eventually used by enough of the population that the arbiters of the English language, the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary, decide that they can be added to the official roster of English vocabulary. Many of these words start out as slang, like the new word riffage, added in July 2010, to describe the repetitive playing of catchy musical phrases (“riffs”) on a guitar. In September 2010, another musical word was added to the OED: dubstep, the syncopated percussive electronic music with a heavy bass drive that became popular in London dance clubs starting in 2001.

Of course, if you live in the boonies (a word also added September 2010) you might not have heard this music. If you’re in the boonies, you’re out in a remote area, in the boondocks, a rural location isolated from the rest of civilization – or at least from modern dance clubs. In fact, if you go to a grocer’s in such a small town with your shopping list of new September 2010 OED words and ask for borlotti (Italian white kidney beans) or goji (Chinese wolfberries), you probably won’t have much luck.

You’ll be glad to know that parkour is gaining in popularity worldwide, though, and doesn’t require any big-city facilities, though it’s frequently practiced there. Parkour (parcours in the original French) is a type of training or competition in which participants use any physical means possible to get over, under, or through obstacles. Developed in the early 1930s by French naval officer Georges Hébert, it involves no tools or aids, just well-honed bodies with great athletic skills. You can probably find video clips of parkour on your iPod – another word that was added to the OED in September 2010.