The next time someone calls you out for using slang such as FOMO, school them by referring to the Merriam-Webster dictionary.
Thousands of words — including those Internet terms and acronyms — were just added to the dictionary. Among the new additions are the aforementioned FOMO (That’s “fear of missing out,” FYI), revenge porn, bitcoin, and ICYMI (“in case you missed it”).
Other new inductees that made the cut include TMI (“too much information,” a term the Merriam-Webster dictionary evidently doesn’t apply to itself), nomophobia (fear of being without access to a working cell phone), and dox (to publicly identify or publish private info about someone as revenge or punishment).
Staying on the topic of vengeance, a particularly nasty variety of modern-day, so-called, retribution has also been added to the dictionary, namely “revenge porn.” Check out its description, as defined by Merriam-Webster, below.
“The new entries and senses offer a kind of snapshot of how exactly our language expands. It doesn’t happen quickly—we monitored many of these words for years before they’d met our criteria for entry—and it’s pushed by various fields and endeavors,” reads a blog post announcing the new additions.
If you’re not familiar with some of these terms and phrases, worry not; some of the newfound vocab even had us nonplussed — and we supposedly make a living from our way with words. Among the interesting new terminology is “waggle dance,” which refers to “a series of figure eight movements performed by a bee to indicate the direction and abundance of a food source.”
Oh. Oh, of course.
This isn’t the first time web slang and acronyms have been added to the dictionary. YOLO (“you only live once”) made it in already, and how can we forget that 2015’s word of the year was an emoji?
It really is a messed up world we live in. Faced with such bleak times, all you can do is ROFL.
