You know where you were, right, 12s? Marshawn Lynch took the handoff from Matt Hasselbeck, stormed, bounced, sprinted, powered, and stiff-armed his way to a 67-yard touchdown run in the Seattle Seahawks shocking Wild Card playoff victory against the New Orleans Saints in the 2010 season postseason. No one expected Seattle to beat the Saints and no one expected Marshawn Lynch to create an earthquake.
Lynch has made a great living off the name Beast Mode. He has his own apparel company named this and he deserves all the money he earns from that as he is as smart a businessman as he was a great running back. Arguably, no one was better in a short-yardage situation than Lynch was.
Now, I am not sure he ever had hopes to get the term Beast Mode into the Merriam-Webster dictionary. Would anyone? Does a person sit around the table trying to come up with catchphrases and think, "I really hope that makes it into the dictionary one day!" It's not like the decision-makers at Merriam-Webster are handing out financial rewards for such a thing (I don't think).
And yet, this week Merriam-Webster announced its list of 690 new words that will be included in the newest edition of its dictionary and Beast Mode is among them. According to Merriam-Webster, Beast Mode has the following meaning:
Marshawn Lynch is surely smiling over Beast Mode getting into the Merriam-Webster dictionary
beast mode (noun, slang) – “an extremely aggressive or energetic style or manner that someone (such as an athlete) adopts temporarily (as to overpower an opponent in a fight or competition)”
Goodness, no argument there. That is exactly what going "beast mode" means. Maybe someone at the Merriam-Webster company is a Seattle Seahawks fan. At the very least, they are likely a Marshawn Lynch fan (one would assume).
I haven't heard Marshawn Lynch's reaction to "beast mode" getting into the dictionary. I wonder if he has some kind of trademark rights over the use? Either way, somewhere he is surely smiling over the situation.