August 31st, 2009
he silly season must very nearly be over if we’re already talking about what words have made the Collins English Dictionary.
This year’s tedious publicity stunt has worked by drawing attention to young people’s slang, some of which — wait for it — is used on Twitter. ‘Noob’ and ‘meh’ and ‘mwah’ and ‘OMG’ and ‘wtf’ and all the rest of it.
The real point of the story, though, is contained in this quote from Elain Higgleton, Collins’ editorial director:
In three or four years a lot of these words may have fallen out of use and might well come out of the dictionary.
Or, to put it more plainly, “in three or four years, a lot of these words won’t help sales, and might as well come out of the dictionary.”
No matter: there’ll be plenty of other ‘zeitgeisty’ (yuck) terms to flog future editions.
Just don’t expect me to buy it. This copywriter’s sticking with the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. It’s crammed full of fascinating words, and the real joy of it is that most of them aren’t to be found anywhere on Twitter.
Twitter slang in dictionary. FFS, who cares?
8:45 pm. Filed under: Words.
Author: Ben Locker.
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Tags: dictionaries, Journalism, publicity stunts, twitter, Words
