Compilers of the Oxford Dictionary of English have added 2,000 new words to the latest edition.
The world's largest single-volume dictionary, the ODE is now in its third edition. Lexicographers research entries from a database of two billion words to decide which ones make the cut.
Speaking to National Public Radio, ODE Head of Online Dictionaries Catherine Soanes acknowledged the common concern that new words may be fleeting or faddish.
She said that "if we have enough evidence that a word isn't just being used by one person on one website–it's being used by a community of users across quite a large spectrum—then those words become candidates."
Additions to the ODE include "vuvuzela," the name of the horn notorious for its blaring at soccer's 2010 World Cup, "tweetup," a real-life meeting of users from the social networking site Twitter, and "defriend," the term for dropping another user from one's Facebook profile.
"Naughty step" is a new phrase to enter the dictionary, from the UK TV show Supernanny, in which children are banished to the stairs as punishment for their misbehaviour.
Compilers have also judged "bromance" significant enough to warrant an entry. A bromance is a film about an affectionate yet non-sexual relationship between two males, a genre similar to the "buddy" movie.
The Oxford Dictionary of English was first published in 1998 and revised in 2003. It is a concise version of the multivolume Oxford English Dictionary, a mammoth work containing almost 300,000 main entries across 22,000 pages.
A third edition of the OED–the first appeared in 1928–is almost complete.
23 August 2010
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