Have you ever looked for a word to describe your obsessive fanaticism for an artist? ‘Fanatic’ is so passé, and ‘devotee’ sounds a little bit off, so what do you call yourself? Well, if the Oxford Dictionary is anything to go by, you’re a ‘stan’.
As Time reports, the Oxford Dictionary now includes an entry for the word ‘stan’. When used as a noun, it is apparently defined as ‘an overzealous or obsessive fan of a particular celebrity,’ and when used as an informal verb, it’s used in the same sense as saying ‘I’m a big follower of this artist.’
While that’s all well and good, the curious part of this comes from the example of the word’s etymology. The word’s origin is given as “Early 21st century: probably with allusion to the 2000 song “Stan” by the American rapper Eminem, about an obsessed fan.”
That’s right, Eminem’s famous song ‘Stan’ is now not only a verified banger in its own right, but now also a verified word in the dictionary. The best part is that you’ve now got yourself a new word to use in Scrabble, so you can now throw all those rules regarding ‘no proper nouns’ out the window.
