Good news, tweeps: The Oxford Dictionary adds new words

by Wilfred Okiche

The words retweet, sexting, cyberbullying and textspeak have been added to the latest edition of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary and are now legitimate English words. They follow in the wake of terms like LOL and OMG which were added in previous editions.

Around 400 new words were added in the 12th edition to commemorate the dictionary’s centenary anniversary. The new words were selected after being entered into a database of 2 billion words drawn from contemporary websites texts to prove their ubiquity.

Excerpts include:

Retweet

Verb: (on the social networking service Twitter) repost or forward a message by another user.

Sexting

Noun: the sending of sexually explicit photographs or messages via mobile phone.

Cyberbullying

Noun: the use of electronic communication to bully a person, typically by sending messages of an intimidating or threatening nature.

Woot

Used to express enthusiasm in online communication.

A statement from the publishers goes thus: “are just carrying in the tradition of a dictionary that has always sought to be progressive and up to date”.

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