If you’re set to have a kid anytime after today, you should quietly weep for it–it’ll never grow up in a world where the word “selfie” isn’t in the official Merriam-Webster dictionary.
The famous Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary is adding over 150 news words this year, and they’ve just announced a handful of them. The list of new words includes some trendy food words, but mostly tech and social media-related terms, which says a lot about the changing landscape of our society.
Or something like that.
Joining “selfie” (Oxford dictionary’s ‘Word of the Year’ last year) are the words “catfish,” “hashtag,” “tweep,” “crowdfunding,” “gamification,” and plain old “social networking.”
Some example definitions:
selfie, noun: an image of oneself taken by oneself using a digital camera especially for posting on social networks
catfish, noun: a person who sets up a false personal profile on a social networking site for fraudulent or deceptive purposes
crowdfunding, noun: the practice of soliciting financial contributions from a large number of people especially from the online community
gamification, noun: the process of adding games or gamelike elements to something (as a task) so as to encourage participation
hashtag, noun: a word or phrase preceded by the symbol # that classifies or categorizes the accompanying text (such as a tweet)
Strangely enough, “selfie” or “hashtag” isn’t the most interesting word added in 2014. That would go to “turducken,” which Merriam-Webster has finally added after being in existence for over 30 years. They describe it as “a boneless chicken stuffed into a boneless duck stuffed into a boneless turkey.” Yep.
Merriam-Webster is no stranger to updating their dictionaries to reflect the kidz speak. In the past, they’ve added words like “F-bomb” and “sexting” to their reference tomes.
Merriam-Webster is asking people to converse about all the new words by using the #MW2014NewWords hashtag on Twitter. Do you think they want us to using the #hashtag hashtag when discussing that specific addition?
Image via Miley Cyrus, Instagram