Trying to grasp words like skibidi? You'd have to be otrovertedly delulu

My goodness, is it time for the Cambridge Dictionary's annual release of the new words that have made it into its hallowed listings already!

- Lucy Mangan

Monday It seems to come round quicker every year, doesn't it? Possibly that should be "more quickly". Their grammarian splinter group will let me know.

Far more so than birthdays or adventures in HRT, this event is a great measure of how functionally old you are. How much of the world do you, quite literally, still understand? I have heard of, and indeed enjoy, though have never personally deployed, "delulu" - a play on "delusional". "Tradwife" too - which is the practice of monetising all the most boring bits of motherhood and domesticity on Instagram, under the guise of upholding conservative tradition. I like to think that among tradwives themselves it also carries the meaning of "socking all the proceeds away in a secret bank account and taking off for Costa Rica the minute the last child turns 18", but I have yet to confirm.

Then things get harder. "Mouse jiggler" is more innocuous than I first feared and just about inferable (software that makes it look like you are still working if you are not in the office but remotely monitorable) but "skibidi" defeated me. It's a YouTuber's coinage, and seems to mean everything and nothing. Only those born to the skibidi can use it properly. And that is as it should be. The words "bath chair", "tartan rug" and "Werther's Originals" remain for the rest of us.