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.”   ……. ♥