Yahoo News 
'Teenage', 'mass media' and 'wimp': The words we owe to 'The Great Gatsby'
F Scott Fitzgerald is credited with introducing the word "wicked" as a term of approval
'Wicked', 't-shirt', 'teenagers' and 'mass media' are phrases not from the Nineties or the Swinging Sixties but the Roaring Twenties, researchers have found.
The words found their way into modern language thanks to the lasting influence of the jazz age on 1920s America.
The hedonistic era famous for its consumption of alcohol, parties and money is back in back fashion thanks to the release this week of Baz Luhrmann's adaptation of F Scott Fitzgerald's novel 'The Great Gatsby'.
[The Great Gatsby opens in America]
As well as giving us an obsession with flapper dresses and celebrity culture that world is responsible for dozens of popular words and phrases.
Among the words first coined in the Jazz Age, which was chronicled by Fitzgerald in a series of stories and novels, are "mass media", "cold turkey" and "sub prime".
Other words and phrases invented in the early 1920s include "teenage", "wimp", "junkie" and "mock-up".
Fitzgerald himself is regarded as the first writer to record words including "T-shirt" and "wicked" as a term of approval.
The decade - which was the period of Prohibition in the United States - sparked dozens of terms for inebration including "squiffy", "zozzled", "tanked", "blotto" and "plastered".
But not all phrases caught on. "Spifflicated", "jingled", "polluted" and "fried to the hat" - all referring to drunkenness - is not part of modern day vernacular.
Academic Sarah Churchwell, an expert on Fitzgerald and professor of American literature at the University of East Anglia, said the 1920s saw an explosion of new words and phrases to reflect a growing obsession with money, sex and celebrity culture.
Her new book 'Careless People - Murder, Mayhem And The Invention Of The Great Gatsby' explores the origin of phrases including "French kiss", "off the rack" and "market research".
[Related: Barbecues, booze and bungalows: The English words that aren't really English at all]
In 1922, the year 'The Great Gatsby' is set, words and phrases including "Hollywood", "sexiness" and "transvestite" were all recorded for the first time.
She said: "One of the reasons why The Great Gatsby remains so strikingly relevant to readers today is that Fitzgerald could see that a new way of life was emerging all around him - our way of life.
"Gatsby is one product from that emergent world, but another is the lexicon it invented to describe new trends, activities and interests. Many of the words we may assume belong to our age were actually dreamed up during the Jazz Age.
[Related: 'Great Gatsby' filmmaker wants to inspire summer of lavish parties]
"As we rediscover our interest in the Roaring Twenties, we are also discovering the origins of our own modern culture, a culture that Fitzgerald understood and captured better than anyone."
Luhrmann's screen version of the classic novel stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan and portrays a world of glamorous gangsters and bootleggers.
