Today's headline:
Pope beatifies John Paul II before 1.5M faithful
...and this is how I could increase my vocabulary with the word beatify.
Which made me think. We are used to coming across new words brought to life by technological advancement or the language use of the youth. This word is surely not among those. It is hardly a technical term, either. Yet, I've spent the 26 years of my language learning career without seeing this word even once. No wonder, though. Why would it surface in coursebooks? It's not frequent in news items or everyday discussion topics, either.
But now that it has happened, will this item of vocabulary be more common in learner wordlists? Just consider the case of vuvuzela - there were relatively few people who knew about this word before the World Cup and then it entered common parlance because of an event of worldwide importance. (Let's ignore the obvious differences between the two for now.)
Lifelong learning, or what?
Any comments?