Srsly? Twerk, selfie, phablet added to Oxford Dictionaries Online
Too bad there isn't an "emoji" that can properly depict the look on grammar gurus' faces when they find out that the word "twerk" has been added to the Oxford Dictionaries Online (ODO). It would "srsly" be funny.
Oxford University Press announced Wednesday the latest update to its free online dictionary of current English. Keeping up with Internet speech, colloquial words like "selfie," "twerk," "phablet," "emoji," "TL;DR" and "srsly" have been added to the ODO.
What does it all mean?
Twerking has been around longer than Miley Cyrus' controversial MTV Video Music Awards performance, but until now it has been considered a slang word. It is defined in the ODO as a "dance to popular music in a sexually provocative manner involving thrusting hip movements and a low, squatting stance."
The acronym TL;DR has also been added to the online dictionary, which is short for "too long; didn't read." It is typically used in online forums to summarize a lengthy text post. The phrase can be used in earnest by the writer of the text or with sarcasm in the comments section of a post.
Selfie has been defined as "a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website." It can be argued that the selfie became popularized in the early days of social network MySpace.com.
Emojis have existed on smartphones for years, but became part of pop culture when it was mentioned in the HBO series "Girls." It is defined as "a small digital image or icon used to express an idea or emotion in electronic communication."
Phablet has been defined as "a smartphone having a screen which is intermediate in size between that of a typical smartphone and a tablet computer." The most well-known phablet is perhaps the Samsung Galaxy Note.
Srsly was previously Internet slang for seriously. It was often used to caption a photo of a skeptical-looking animal. Now, it is an official word.
Oxford University Press updates the ODO on a quarterly basis. The rest of the words recently added to the dictionary can be found at oxforddictionaries.com.
TL;DR: Several Internet slang words have been added to the Oxford English Dictionaries Online.
