Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary has been updated to include 150 new words and definitions this year, its publisher announced this morning.
Four technology-related additions are ‘tweet’, ‘social media’, ‘crowdsourcing’ and ‘m-commerce’, words that should have been familiar to readers of this blog for years now.
In fact, according to Merriam-Webster, the first known use for the word ‘tweet’ dates back to the year 1768. Clearly, Jack Dorsey’s forefathers were true visionaries.
In all seriousness, I can’t help but wonder what took the publisher so long to add the above words to the dictionary. Peter Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster’s Editor at Large, explains in a statement:
“We’ve been tracking words like social media and tweet for years, of course, and now we feel their meanings have stabilized enough to include them in the dictionary.”
Other new words that have had their meaning stabilized sufficiently according to the company include bromance (“a close nonsexual friendship between men”), fist bump (with thanks to Barack Obama), cougar (“a middle-aged woman seeking a romantic relationship with a younger man”) and helicopter parent (“a parent who is overly involved in the life of his or her child”).
Retweet, lulz, trollface, pedobear and philosoraptor haven’t made the cut yet.