OMG! Oxford English Dictionary Gets Hip

Although it’s probably not cool to say “hip”, you know what I mean. And the Oxford English Dictionary is, apparently, now the hippest bona fide dictionary around. They’ve given themselves a literary up-do by adding the graphic symbol ♥. Yes, they did.

The ♥ symbol will go beside the word “heart”, listed as a verb meaning ‘to love’. How ’bout that. The ♥ symbol will be a WORD!  Of course, I’m wondering how this will affect my scrabble game… but never mind that… because that’s not all they’ve done.

They’ve also added:

OMG: expressing astonishment, excitement, embarrassment, etc.: ‘oh my God!’ (just in case you were living under a rock and didn’t actually know…)

Dotbomb: an internet company which has become bankrupt or ceased to operate; a failed or unsuccessful dotcom (alrighty then …)

Ego-surfing: the practice of searching on the Internet for mentions of one’s own name or the name of one’s business, website, etc. (I’ve never done this… but if I do, I’ll know what to call it.)

LOL: (please tell me you know this one.) (hint: it’s not “Little Old Lady”.)

Muffin top: a roll of flesh which hangs visibly over a person’s (especially a woman’s) tight-fitting waistband (seriously?)

Scrunchy: a wrinkled appearance (and I thought it was a hair tie thingy.)

Singledom: single people (how clever?)

Storming: great, excellent, marvelous (right on.)

Tasty: violent, good at fighting (this is not appetizing.)

Wags: wives and girlfriends of professional football players

Yuck factor: a feeling of horror, revulsion, or disgust generated by an idea, action or situation (okay, but wouldn’t this be more like Valley Girl speak?)

This is all so, like, I dunno, like, okay, so like … okay OMG, like I don’t know whether I should be ROFL, LMAO or SMDH.

Or maybe I’ll just pretend it never happened. “Whatever.”

If you want to read more about this titillating detour from respectable linguistics, here’s a great article by Christian Tappe from the Washington Examiner.  As Mr. Tappe says, “The Oxford English Dictionary’s new entries are all like totally bloggable.”   ……. ♥

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Patricia Saxton

2 Comments
  • Rand

    March 26, 2011 at 7:20 am Reply

    A great post Patricia! Apart from the fact that I have never got why someone would say Small Molecule DNA Hybrids (SMDH) to someone (maybe it’s like an inside scientist joke); the acronym LOL has always puzzled me. LOL is just so limiting. You have to be both laughing and out loud. You can’t use it when you’re softly chuckling to yourself. So for the record I prefer the descriptor “Haha”, which according to the Oxford Online Dictionary is either 1) used to represent laughter, or 2) a ditch with a wall on its inner side below ground level, forming a boundary to a park or garden without interrupting the view. Ain’t language fun!

    • saxtonstudio

      March 26, 2011 at 12:05 pm Reply

      Definitely fun, as was your LOL worthy reply! Or should I say LG (little grin?) worthy? Small Molecule DNA Hybrids. Priceless, Rand!

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