Origin of the word “vape”
Vape is Oxford’s word of the year
Oxford Dictionaries has announced vape as international word of the year. Language research found that the use of the word vape has more than doubled this year compared to 2013. The decision to chose that word over indyref, normcore and contactless reflects the popularity and economic impact of e-cigarettes.
When smokers switched to e-cigarettes, they didn’t want anyting to remind them of smoking. Even the vocabulary had to adapt. Indeed, “smoking” an e-cig was a non sense because there is no smoke, only vapor. “Vape” originated as an abbreviation of vapour or vaporize. It means to inhale and exhale the vapour produced by an electronic cigarette.
A recent word?
Surprisingly, the word vape existed before the phenomenon, before e-cigarettes were sold. Altough it was not until 2009 that vape and vaping appeared regularly in mainstream sources, it was inveted earlier. According to Oxford Dictionaries research, it was first used in a 1983 article in New Society. Entitled ‘Why do People Smoke?’, the article describes what was then a hypothetical device: “an inhaler or ‘non-combustible’ cigarette, looking much like the real thing, but…delivering a metered dose of nicotine vapour”. The new habit, if it catches on, would be known as vaping.
A whole new vape world
If people can vape then many words have been invented to go with it: vape shop, vape lounge, vape fluid, vape juice, etc
In Other languages ?
Spanish = vapear
Italian = svapare
Portugese = vaporizar
French = vapoter
Canadian French = vaper
German = dampfen
Dutch = dampen
Sources :
http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2014/11/oxford-dictionaries-word-year-vape
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2838819/Vape-named-word-year-E-cigarette-term-s-use-doubles-year-beats-indyref-normcore-contactless.html#ixzz3K1UvmtMz
