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Bitcoin, BYOD, Phablet, Selfie, and Twerking Find Place In Oxford Dictionary 131

Posted by samzenpus from the you-keep-using-that-word-I-do-not-think-it-means-what-you-think-it-means dept.
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'."
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Bitcoin, BYOD, Phablet, Selfie, and Twerking Find Place In Oxford Dictionary More

Bitcoin, BYOD, Phablet, Selfie, and Twerking Find Place In Oxford Dictionary

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  • Twerking? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    No idea.

    • Re:Twerking? (Score:5, Funny)

      by jaymzter ( 452402 ) on Wednesday August 28, 2013 @10:46PM (#44702997) Homepage

      Tell me about it, I feel like Abe Simpson:

      "I used to be `with it.' But then they changed what `it' was. Now what I'm `with' isn't `it' and what's `it' seems weird and scary to me. It'll happen to you."

      • Re:Twerking? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 28, 2013 @11:27PM (#44703279)

        Tell me about it, I feel like Abe Simpson:

        "I used to be `with it.' But then they changed what `it' was. Now what I'm `with' isn't `it' and what's `it' seems weird and scary to me. It'll happen to you."

        The mistake is in caring about keeping up with trends or slang or "what's cool" in the first place.

        Write your own life story, and quit worrying about what other people say or think. You'll be surprised
        how much happiness is linked with this approach.

        • The mistake is in caring about keeping up with trends or slang or "what's cool" in the first place.

          Write your own life story, and quit worrying about what other people say or think. You'll be surprised
          how much happiness is linked with this approach.

          Thanks, I think I needed that this morning.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by geekoid ( 135745 )

          unless you get happiness from money.

    • CNN taught me that it's when a woman bounces her ass up and down.

      Wiki also notes, with a citation "Twerking carries both gendered and racialized connotations." Which seems about as idiotic to me as saying round corners are something associated exclusively with iphones.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by lgw ( 121541 )

        Connotations are implications that are often true, not always true. And that's definitely the case for "twerking", as you can verify on any sex-positive youtube clone. Heck, even on daily motion it's obvious, with only Miley Cyrus and some k-pop dance group as exceptions on the first page of results.

        WTF is a Phablet? anyone?

        • Re:Twerking? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by demonlapin ( 527802 ) on Wednesday August 28, 2013 @11:01PM (#44703093) Homepage Journal
          Please stop talking about Miley Cyrus. That performance was one of the worst things I've ever seen. Not because she decided to try to shock people - Madonna and Gaga have both done that excellently over the years - but because she failed so badly at being actually sexy. Creepy tongue, vag itch impression, ugh. The only decent thing that's come out of it is this [youtube.com].
          • Comment removed based on user account deletion

            • Re: (Score:1)

              by Anonymous Coward

              The problem isn't that she WAS too sexy. The problem was she WASN'T.

              Sex for shock value is one thing. Gets the conservatives up in arms. But Miley has everyone up in arms because she failed so badly at it that even the sexual degenerates are upset with her too.

            • Morals don't come in to it at all. It was just flat out a ridiculous performance.

            • She failed to deliver.

          • Creepy tongue, Marilyn Manson
            Vag itch impression, Madonna
            Bizarre and stupid background stuff like pedobears: Gaga
            Sexual content: everyone

            I saw this performance as a parody of everything going on today in popular music. The question is, who actually envisioned it and designed the performance? That could tell us if it was a brilliant work of parody or a hilarious work of insanity.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by TheCarp ( 96830 )

            > That performance .... I've ever seen

            I think I have identified your problem. Until people started talking about this Miley person and her twerking, I had no idea MTV even still existed.

            All in all, I feel pretty bi-winning with tiger blood about that.

        • Too big to be a phone, too small to be a tablet.

        • Phablet = Phone + Tablet. It's the term being used by marketers who realize that 5+ inch displays can't really be pure phones, but still want to sell them.

          Examples: Galaxy Note, Asus FonePad, etc.

    • Re: Twerking? (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Have you tried looking it up in a dictionary?

    • Re:Tworking? (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      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 "tor

      • I'm a lifelong native speaker, and it looks and sounds plenty like English to me... a bit like "twerp", perhaps.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Seumas ( 6865 )

      I'm truly sorry to be the one to teach you this:

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgoyVRO0A0E [youtube.com]

      Anyway, "twerking" is more or less putting your hands on your knees, squatting down, and jerking/bouncing/wobbling your hips and ass back and forth, so it looks like you're fucking someone who is on all-fours on the ground in the ass. It looks stupid, but has been around for awhile, I guess.

      Anyway, this "we're adding new stupid shit to the dictionary!' thing isn't worth paying attention to. It's just a regularly sched

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by skids ( 119237 )

        I think its entirely appropriate that the dictionary keep track of "widely used tech terms" like... uh... twerking? Goddamn I must be in the wrong field of tech!

    • Re:Twerking? (Score:4, Funny)

      by wonkey_monkey ( 2592601 ) on Thursday August 29, 2013 @03:08AM (#44704091) Homepage

      Nor did I until a few weeks ago.

      Friend: "So, Lucy starts Twerking and..."
      Me: "Wait, twerking?"
      Friend: "Yeah. You know what twerking is?"
      Me: "Uh... is it like a queef?"

      • Excrement! I never heard of queef before. However, I don't think I'll mention it to my wife. A bit of a showstopper, that...
    • This morning the radio played Morgan Freeman reading aloud the new dictionary definition of twerking. I recommend googling it- worthwhile!

  • Does the ODO include "First Post" or FP?

    Cheers,
    Dave

  • 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

    • Re:Mutability (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Xtifr ( 1323 ) on Wednesday August 28, 2013 @11:08PM (#44703147) Homepage

      That aside, I don't want to live on this planet anymore.

      Why? As long as it's properly marked as slang (and I can't imagine it would be called anything else), it serves it purpose of letting people who aren't familiar with the word know what it means. I can't count the number of times I have found some obscure bit of slang in an old book, and been overjoyed to find out that it's documented in my dictionary. In ten, or twenty, or fifty years, when the term "twerking" has basically died the death it deserves, someone reading a work published in 2013 may be equally overjoyed to find his or her dictionary explains the word. That's what dictionaries are for.

    • Words like 'Phablet' are what turn good, decent, empiricists into linguistic prescriptivists, not that I can blame them under the circumstances (though a bit of mockery is always in order).

    • 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.

      Badass or just a really bad shot, that is the question.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by geekoid ( 135745 )

        Neither, over angry person whose train thought can't get past 'If I don't like it, kill them'.
        The poster is a real Herp-Derp.

  • They should add

    Twerk'); DROP TABLE Verbs; --

  • 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.

    • A phrase doesn't deserve its own entry

      So you would exclude "fait accompli" and "juste milieu" from the dictionary?

      You go from on the order of 170,000 words to practically damn uncountable

      Wikipedia says that the OED has about 750,000 entries.

      • So you would exclude "fait accompli" and "juste milieu" from the dictionary?

        Yes I would.

        Even the OED defines dictionary [oxforddictionaries.com] as dealing with words and not phrases.

        a book or electronic resource that lists the words of a language (typically in alphabetical order) and gives their meaning, or gives the equivalent words in a different language, often also providing information about pronunciation, origin, and usage:

        I see no mention of phrase in that definition.

        • That's not the OED definition. This [oed.com] is the OED definition:

          1. a. A book which explains or translates, usually in alphabetical order, the words of a language or languages (or of a particular category of vocabulary) ...

          "Particular category of vocabulary" is understood to include phrases.

          • Sorry I mis-referenced. I meant the Oxford Online Dictionary (OOD) which is the subject of the article.

            "Particular category of vocabulary" is understood to include phrases.

            Citation please. To me, ""[p]articular category of vocabulary" means a specific area such as a dictionary of engineering terms.

            From your citation;

            What time was spent in turning over Dictionaries and Phraseologies to assure the author of doubtful constructions.

            It seems that words go in dictionaries and phrases go in phrasiologies.

      • Which is about 580000 too many, IMO. Of course, they can do whatever they want. It's not like anybody's going to read their book.

        • Of course, they can do whatever they want. It's not like anybody's going to read their book.

          The OED is widely considered to the finest and most authoritative dictionary of the English language. Every serious English language scholar has access to and consults the OED.

    • But the meaning of "Click and connect" as a phrase is different from the meaning as individual words. The indivdual words could refer to a set of actions. The phrase rarely means a very specific subset.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by geekoid ( 135745 )

      Phrase in common usage have always been part of dictionaries. The fact there are a lot of them is irrelevant.

      IN short, your opinion is in no way rooted in facts or with actual data, thus it's wrong.

      • My opinion is a value judgment and value judgments are, by definition, correct insofar as they accurately reflect one's thoughts, but neither mine nore the authors of the OED are universally applicable.

        Except for yours, of course. You appear to be able to judge the rightness of everybody's values.

  • 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

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Xtifr ( 1323 )

      I thought words get added when there's long term meaningfulness.

      The primary criterion is being widespread. Long-term is a secondary factor, though often an important one. The OOD happens to be a resource which gives less weight to long-term meaningfulness than, say, the OED. But documenting widespread-but-not-long-term (flash-in-the-pan) terms is a useful function, since documents written today may still exist years in the future.

      Honestly, as a fan of 1940s mystery novels, I'm glad to see slang-of-an-era get documented. Even if that era is now, the documentation will co

  • End (Score:2, Funny)

    by Optimal Cynic ( 2886377 )
    This is the end of Western civilisation as we know it.

    • I think that was changing the acceptable meaning of "literally" to include that which is not. I have enough of a problem with _accepting_ ignorance much less _encouraging_ it.

      • I think that was changing the acceptable meaning of "literally" to include that which is not.

        You're kid--no, you're not. So "literally" has been redefined to mean, well, nothing, really.

        I've already updated what our style guide says regarding this word to LITERAL, LITERALLY: Per the OED, the adverb has become purely a 'noise' word which must therefore be avoided. For the same reason, avoid employing the adjective as well, except in strict technical usage, e.g. when referring to a 'bare' representation of a value of a given type, e.g. 'binary literal', 'string literal', and so on.

        I have enough of a problem with _accepting_ ignorance much less _encouraging_ it.

        You are not alone,

        • You are not alone, trust me. Words ought to mean things.

          I was literally doing a crossword puzzle last night where the clue was "good (slang)" and the answer was "bad". And by literally, I mean literally (as in "not figuratively").

          Just felt like sharing. Good day, sir.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      This is the end of Western civilisation as we know it.

      Everyone who reaches middle age has had thoughts such as yours.

      What is actually ending is not "civilisation" but your capacity to deal
      with stupid behavior, which tends to dwindle as one grows older.
      But there IS good news : just quit caring about stupid stuff that doesn't
      directly affect your own life, and it won't bother you any more.
      Trust me, this is a strategy which works.

      .

  • 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!)

  • 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.

  • Their website apparently can't handle words with embedded semi-colons.
    However, you can get to the original definition page using Google Cache.

  • 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.

  • 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.
  • And the formation of "NewSpeak" marches on...

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