The biggest US dictionary, Merriam-Webster, added 150 words to their new edition today. You’ll be very familiar with some of them.
With the speed of life online speeding up all aspects our lives, it is also speeding up how the language we speak evolves. Today, the biggest US dictionary, Merriam-Webster added a heap of new words to their new edition, and most are words you will be verh familiar with if you spend most of your time, like us, online.
Most interestingly, they also cite the first time they could find the word used. ‘Hashtag’ debuted in 2008, ‘selfie’ in 2002 and ‘spoiler alert’ was first seen in 1994. Must have been for an episode of The X Files.
Other words to make it in the book now include ‘unfriend’, ‘fangirl’, ‘dubstep’ and ‘crowdfunding’.
TIME has the full list here, including ‘fracking’. Defined as ‘the injection of fluid into shale beds at high pressure in order to free up petroleum resources (such as oil or natural gas)’ first appeared in 1953.
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