Learning the lingo

I was reading a blog (on evolution) the other day, and I realized what it feels like to come across brand new words. I have a pretty large active vocabulary, so in my usual day-to-day reading, I generally don't have to haul out the dictionary very often, but in the space of two or three paragraphs, I tripped up on six words . . . not only didn't I know what they meant, I couldn't even hazard a guess. Talk about being out of your element!

So I have some real anxiety about how to introduce new words as we explore 2.0. Of course, some of them are "names" like Flickr, Twitter, Rollyo, Technorati, etc., and I can tell from their use (and thankfully, that they're capitalized) that they are companies or services. A quick google will find them (see, even though they're usually capitalized, they sometimes become verbs). But blog, wiki and mashup are generic (like kleenex has become), and I know I have trouble figuring out what they mean.

So in the Web 2.0 world, I wonder how to get my head around the new lingo. I went searching a bit to see if there were any web 2.0 tools, but I haven't found anything yet. I'll keep exploring, but it's probably too "old-world" to see this as a problem. Does it really matter if I don't [yet] understand what a mashup is?