The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) has included more than 2,500 new or revised words to its glossary released Friday, June 14. An exception to the rules has been made for the addition of "tweet," it does not fulfill a fundamental OED tenet.
The Oxford English Dictionary officials have included 2,875 new or revised words to its glossary as a part of its June 2013 update released Friday. The dictionary includes social media terms such as "follow" (verb), "follower" (noun) and "tweet" (noun and verb), that have been commonly used in English for several years.
The word "tweet," which has been listed as a noun and a verb stands apart as the inclusion breaks an OED rule. For any word to be considered for inclusion in the Oxford English Dictionary, it must be in use for ten years, says OED's chief editor John Simpson in a statement. Despite the word "tweet" completing seven years this March, OED officials broke their own rule by three years to include the word based on its wide usage in the English language.
The addition of new word entries, sub entries and senses include words like "Crowdsourcing", "flash mob", "geekery", "3D printer", "e-readers", "mouseovers", "redirects" and a lot more.
According to the dictionary, the definition of "follow" now also includes tracking of a person or an organization on social media sites like Facebook and Google+. With the latest addition of words, the OED now consists of 823,000 entries.
Technical entries that made it to the glossary this year such as "flash mob" is defined as a large group of people gathered together to perform a prearranged act and disperse quickly. The dictionary defined "3D Printer" as a means to create something by printing out layer upon layer of material.
Other non-technical words that made it to the OED word-list include "fiscal cliff" and "the silent treatment". The dictionary also defined the word "dad-dancing" as "an awkward, unfashionable, or unrestrained style of dancing to pop music, as characteristically performed by middle-aged or older men."
