Getting L33t Into the Oxford English Dictionary

arcticstoat writes "A few net-speak acronyms such as LOL and OMG were entered to the Oxford English Dictionary last month, but could we ever see l33t-speak (complete with numbers) or ROFLcopters in the OED? In this interview with OED principal editor Graeme Diamond, he reveals the selection criteria for new words and discusses the potential for words such as 'l33t' to get into the dictionary. 'L33t is obviously a respelling and a contraction [of elite],' says Diamond, 'so it would be a separate entry, and yes it is familiar to me, so I think it's something we would consider for inclusion.'"

Comments

Allow me

[Anonymous Coward]

l33t

Pronunciation: /e'lE:t/

1.Superior.
eg "Gibb0r m3 j00r l33t ju4r3z!"

Oh dear God, no. NO.

[Tolkien]

A series of letters containing numbers doesn't make it a word. "Leet".. retarded but okay. L33t? Wtf is wrong with these people?

Re:Oh dear God, no. NO.

[grub]

I was going to agree with you but then realized your username could be written as 70lk13n and calmed down.

Re:Oh dear God, no. NO.

[chemicaldave]

It's my understanding that the OED should reflect the evolving lexicon of English. If L33T is used widely enough I don't see why it shouldn't be added.

Re:Oh dear God, no. NO.

[AlecC]

If something often appears in written texts, the OED should list it. The idea is that someone encountering an unfamiliar word should be able to use the OED to find what it it means. The OED differs from some other dictionaries in this matter: it is descriptive, not prescriptive. If a word is or was used often enough with a definable meaning in the written corpus, the OED intends to list it.

Re:Oh dear God, no. NO.

[AmiMoJo]

Precisely, the OED is a record of language, not a guardian of it. You wouldn't normally find slang and contractions in your average dictionary because they are concise, but the full OED includes those things.

Jesus.

[stonecypher]

> yes it is familiar to me, so I think it's something we would consider for inclusion.

And people wonder why I laugh at them when they hold up the OED as a source to be taken seriously.

Re:Jesus.

[AlecC]

Why do you not take the OED seriously? Do you believe it lists words not in use, or that it gives incorrect definitions.

One thing it does not do, which you may be expecting, is make any judgement about /proper/ usage. It is descriptive, not prescriptive. If you are expecting guidance as to good usage, look elsewhere. But take the OED as a source of actual, as opposed to good, usage.

Etymology

[brian0918]

Here is the first known use of the term:

Rychard Byschape in his stede Chosyn he wes concorditer And l33t twa yhere bad eftyr.

-- Andrew of Wyntoun, Ðe orygynale cronykil of Scotland c1425

HAX!!!!!

[guyminuslife]

Oxford English Dictionary:

l33t adj. 1. elite, highly adept esp. referring to a video game player, 2. worthy of praise
"Dude, the OED put in an entry for l33t! That's some l33t dictionary pwnage!"
-- some Anonymouse Coward on Slashdot

"His crown, a noble emblem of defeat
For those who would make light of being l33t."
--- William Shakespeare

"STFU NOOB, UR JUST JEALOUS CUZ WERE L33T AND U SUCK ASS"
--- sipherot299lol, an anemic 13-year-old about to get a cap in his virtual avatar's ass

This is nonsense

[eln]

Anyone who could legitimately be called "l33t" would have hacked the Gibson and added the word to the OED themselves rather than asking for permission.

Absurd.

[MaWeiTao]

Can't we just have a separate dictionary for slang? Does every stupid fad term have to be added to the dictionary? Who even uses leet anymore?

Apparently Oxford's standards for inclusion of new words is rather low. But then I'm guessing they're desperate to keep themselves relevant.

Re:Absurd.

[Happler]

Considering the amount of words in there already that, at one point in their life or another, where considered slang...

no.

Re:Absurd.

[penguinchris]

Two things - first, look at urbandictionary.com. Yes, you can find essentially any slang term there if you already heard it - but you'll get hundreds of alternate definitions, and then there are thousands of terms people have added that are not actually widely used slang. If you were unfamiliar with English slang and tried to use that source, you'd have major problems. That's not to say that a better implementation isn't possible (and there are printed slang dictionaries already that are carefully edited), it just illustrates many of the problems in undertaking such a task.

Second, the OED apparently wishes to be a source of information about how the language is actually used - it updates things as meanings change over time. So you can read something written in not-necessarily-the-Queen's-English, probably online, and look up new words and slang and understand them. Other dictionaries don't do this as aggressively. The OED contains *many* slang terms, but only adds them once they've gained demonstrable widespread cultural impact. Whether or not "leet" or "l33t" qualifies is a separate debate, but you have to understand what the OED is trying to do in order to say whether or not such slang should be included at all, and they've already decided that it should be.

I don't generally use much slang, nor do I often consult a dictionary, but I agree that widespread slang belongs in a dictionary of actual English usage and in other respects the OED is certainly a fine dictionary as far as I can tell.

bad spelling

[MancunianMaskMan]

I thought it's spelt 1337.

OED, get it right

lemmatisation

[carndearg]

I'm an OUP employee, I work on http://oxforddictionaries.com/ and I sit just over a partition from the OED team so I guess I'm well placed to comment on this one. For a start, it already is in our dictionaries. http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/leet . Unfortunately though they have lemmatised it (rendered it into its simplest form) as the rather lame-sounding 'leet' rather than '1337'. Hey, give them a break, they're English graduates! This probably has a root in their research. Analysing the corpus to find out how much the word is used, they are probably ignoring numbers because their job is to look for words. This infographic showing our inclusion process might be illuminating: http://oxforddictionaries.com/page/newwordflowchart/how-a-new-word-enters-an-oxford-dictionary

Re:lemmatisation

[carndearg]

Damn. Linked to the wrong sense of leet in the post above. Try this: http://oxforddictionaries.com/view/entry/m_en_gb0984830?rskey=7RJxzw&result=2#m_en_gb0984830

Can we have TWO dictionaries??

[catmistake]

There's the traditional one... and then there's the one for misspelled words, made-up words, internet anachronisms, lolcat and 1337-speak.

Bling Bling.

[Xacid]

I pretty much outright stopped giving a shit about dictionaries the moment one of them added "bling bling" to it. Raise the bar a little, guys. Geez. That's what urbandictionary is for.

Disappointed

[abigail3306]

I understand putting LOL and OMG because they are abbr. but putting in a word that is originally formed from a misspelling is a bit of an insult for the American language. I thought only correctly spelled words went into the dictionary?

Isn't it remarkable

[Drakkenmensch]

How something that started as a trick to get around online profanity filters is on the verge of receiving official academic recognition?

fucking morons

[kuzb]

People are fucking morons, and this proves it. This is exactly the kind of unintelligent trash that needs to be kept out of the dictionary. The people who maintain the oxford-english dictionary should be fired.