Woot! Sexting, Retweet, and Jeggings Now Officially Words

More than 400 new words were added to the 12th Oxford English Dictionary as the famous catalogue of English verbiage celebrated 100 years in the language business. Retweet, Sexting, and Woot, are among the new entries.

The Oxford English Dictionary has evolved since the first edition was printed in 1911. In recent years, common slang, social trends, and technology have heavily influenced the dictionary.

The 400 new words were selected from a database of nearly 2 billion possibilities. Angus Stevenson, the dictionary’s editor, then worked with his team to determine which words were popular enough to enter the dictionary.

Stevenson said:

 ”It’s how the dictionary has always worked – we get as much evidence as we can so we know it’s not just a small number of people using the word and it’s not going to disappear.

“For example, woot – I don’t use it personally, but that’s not relevant. It’s someone saying hurrah on Facebook, then their friends see it, and it spreads.

“New words reflect the society and era in which they enter the dictionary.”

Oxford has been adding new words like “noob,” “woot,” “cyberbullying,” “sexting,” and “textspeak” to the online version of the dictionary for some time now. But now these words will finally make it into the print edition. Oxford will also add definitions to terms like “follower” and “friend.”