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Bitcoin, BYOD, Phablet, Selfie, and Twerking Find Place In Oxford Dictionary
hypnosec writes "The Oxford Dictionaries Online (ODO) has been updated today to include some of the widely used tech words like Bitcoin, BYOD, Phablet, Selfie, and Twerking among others. Some of the other common tech words which have found a place in the dictionary are 'click and connect', 'digital detox', 'FOMO', 'geek chic', 'hackerspace', 'Internet of Things', 'MOOC', 'selfie', and 'TL;DR'."
No idea.
Does the ODO include "First Post" or FP?
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
The English language (and many other oral languages) have a high level of mutability. The OED was originally started as a compendium of the set of all usages encountered in writing for various forms to expressly include previously 'unregistered' words (re:librarians - my layman's oversimplification) and their grammar with a focus on including historically unregistered words that hadn't made it into the cannon.
That aside, I don't want to live on this planet anymore.
Lastly, if any of you have ever used the word Phablet in conversational English, we need to have a serious discussion between you and my 12 gauge.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
They should add
Twerk'); DROP TABLE Verbs; --
Unfortunately, the context of the Miley thing makes most people think it's a synonym for grinding. It's not. It's a bastardization of "footworking," and it apparently means "to make the ass shake in a provocative manner".
IMHO "twerk" doesn't sound like an English word. I think it should have been "tworking", which could be pronounced like "torquing", so I'm going to make it my mission to always refer to it as "tworking". I also think that people who do it should be called "tworks" (also pronounced like "torques").
tl;dr: Miley is a twork for tworking her ass on TV; she did it because she wanted publicity; 'tworked.
A phrase doesn't deserve its own entry. Imagine if you tried to include every PHRASE in English. You go from on the order of 170,000 words to practically damn uncountable. It's a mistake to even start down that road.
someone mod this mutherfucker up!
Enough with Twerking.
Adding it to the dictionary has been reported on the mainstream news joints, like every 15 minutes all day today. It's been used enough today in the news to warrant the word to be lost for the next 5 years... only to be revived by a question in jeopardy. Thanks mainstream [advertising] media! Now I am late for my 9am home room class (right).
I guess dictionaries have gone social to be relevant. Cause I thought words get added when there's long term meaningfulness. I doubt Twerking is one of them considering technology dies out, i.e. becomes obsolete, for better tech and adding words based on stuff that will be obsolete is just plain illogical.
Otherwise, gosh, we live in a 'look at me!' world nowadays (I'm looking at you Oxford folks).
The OED has officially found a place in my TRASH CAN.
This is the end of Western civilisation as we know it.
One dictionnary that lost my restect: Oxford. Neologies shuld be carefully weighted, not a buzzword trend (*facepalm* I forgot we live in the age of buzzword and 6 months planning!)
Tomorrow is another day...
I should've signed up to go to Mars.
I actually looked up "twerking" on Google yesterday, and the first hit was from OED.
I didn't realise it at the time, but I was likely amongst the first few people to see the OED entry--and had no idea that it had been added the same day--until I saw this story.
I realise that times and language change, but, yeah, I suppose that I am feeling a bit of that "Stop the Internet, I want to get off thing" right now.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Their website apparently can't handle words with embedded semi-colons.
However, you can get to the original definition page using Google Cache.
So, what does half of these mean?
I know I'm over 25, but still, never seen half the words used in written/spoken context..
phablet, mooc, fomo. Are these purely used by american teens or have they just not spread to the rest of the grown up world yet?
The rest have at least been in use for a short time as far as I've seen...
Or perhaps brilliant satire and sarcasm?
Alternatively - consider that what Cyrus shows to the world (talk shows, interviews, etc.) is basically a nerd that accidentally wound up in the music business (Because of connections and an odd kind of cuteness as a child.)
Now she's grown up, and nobody, including herself, knows what to do with her. But she has enough star-power and inertia to keep doing something.
You would think the nerds and geeks here would recognize and empathize with her situation. Besides, as awkward and "unsexy" as she is, 95% of the crowd here would give up a body part to sleep with her.
Dictionary shouldn't include worthless slang words that will be forgotten and unused in a year. Should at least wait for the word to stick around for several years.
I'm a lifelong native speaker, and it looks and sounds plenty like English to me... a bit like "twerp", perhaps.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
AC you're replying to. I'm also a lifelong native speaker. We must be from different parts of the country, or perhaps different "native" countries. I'm from Texas.
Twerp is fine because I've known it since early elementary, but twerk sounds distinctly German to me.
Try the following: $ grep [^BPTYhijlpsuv]erk /usr/share/dict/american-english.
No results! And the same is true for british-english.
Of the ones that do match (in american-english), 19 are jerk, 10 are perk, 8 are clerk, and 5 are Berkeley/Berkshire.
B: Berkeley, Berkshire = British places, or snobby places in California (5 matches)
P: Perkins = British surname
T: Terkel = no idea
Y: Yerkes = no idea
h: gherkin = British English
i: Kierkegaard = Danish surname
j: jerk (19 matches)
l: clerk (8 matches)
p: perk (10 matches)
s: berserk
u: sauerkraut = German
v: overkill
Now let's compare that to [BGWYcdfjnoptvw]ork
Of those, 183 are work, 14 are cork, 13 are fork, 11 are snorkel, 7 are York (British), 6 are dork.
Conclusion: Work is English; werk is not.
This is just embarassing....
Twerp is fine because I've known it since early elementary, but twerk sounds distinctly German to me.
Confirmation bias. Look at how many English words come directly from German. The truth is that there's nothing about a word which sounds German which doesn't sound English as well, unless it's forty syllables long.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
These aren't tech words, they're marketspeak and PHB buzzwords - and WTF is "twerking"? I've been a developer for over 15 years, and I've never heard that one.
And "Geek chic" isn't even a word, it's a snobbish fashionista slut TERM meant to drag *real* geeks into their little style and fashion universe where we'll be assimilated into modern pop culture - talk about burning in hell.
Damn, even Oxford is falling into their trap. Of course, this is nothing new, they've been inducting these stupid colloquialisms as real Engrish for years now. Of course the language is evolving, now faster than ever before, but seriously? Twerking?
According to a story on slate, these words are not being added to the OED, but the oxford dictionary online.
Another prestigious institution going down in flames. Really, you don't need to add things every year just to add them.
These fools ware helping to return language into a serious of grunts.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
When people ask me, "What does TL;DR mean?" I tell them LUIDODO! (lew - ee - dodo). It means "Look it Up In De ODO." I hope this gets put into the next revision.
The G
Just so you know: I'm a native of the Deep South. I'm primarily of Anglo-Irish descent, and all my ancestors were in North America prior to the American Revolution. (FWIW, I'm eligible for membership in the SAR, SAC, and the Mayflower Society.) Both my parents have Master's degrees (my mother's degrees are in English Lit and Library Science). Our family moved North (to the Midwest, actually) while I was in elementary school. After high school and a couple of years of college (still in the Midwest), I spent about 15 years in Appalachia, then a couple of years in CA/AZ. After that, I lived in Australia for several years before coming to Sweden nearly 7 years ago. I've been mostly a writer and editor by trade for the last 15 years, and before that I worked in broadcasting as an announcer and copywriter for nearly a decade. In all the standardised tests I've ever taken, I've ranked consistently in the 97th or better percentile in all categories relating to English.
So I'd say that my credentials as a knowledgeable speaker and writer of English are pretty good.
I also speak fair amount of German and Spanish, can get by in Swedish, and have recently started tackling Mandarin.
And just so you don't think I'm just trying to impress you or whatever, I'll add that it's a damned good thing for me I can speak and write English as well as I do, since it makes me quite valuable here; I'd be in a tough spot without that ability, since I'm not that great a coder, and my mastery of spoken Swedish leaves a lot to be desired even though I've lived here for quite some time.
The o in "work" is actually an example of the o+e ligature (which Slashcode filters out, dammit) or ö except that modern English orthography is allergic to special characters and diacritics. (Compare the pronunciation of the same vowel in horse or sport.)
Make of all that what you will.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
The pronunciations of work, horse, and sport vary dramatically across different regions of the U.S.
Nonaggression works!
And the formation of "NewSpeak" marches on...
Not with regard to the vowel sound represented by the o in each of those words, even in those dialects in which the following r is turned into an approximant. In all cases, the vowel in "work" is fronted (as well as made rhotic, if you're going by the NBC Handbook of Pronunciation), while that in the other two is not.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Rhoticism is of course the main difference, but "work" can rhyme with "ork" in some dialects (West Virginia, Pittsburgh), "uck" (New England), "oik" (New Jersey) and "ark" (Appalachians).
Nonaggression works!