‘Tweet’ added to Oxford English Dictionary
View of the Oxford American College dictionary. The dictionary voted “GIF” as its word of the year.
The word "tweet" can now be found in the illustrious Oxford English Dictionary, where it is defined as: "a posting made on the social networking service Twitter."
"Also: to use Twitter regularly or habitually," the dictionary added, unfortunately referencing an already-dated example: "Not much chance to tweet on Twitter," reads the 2007 "Weblog" excerpt, "especially since it seems that SMS posting from my mobile phone doesn't work."
Ah well, at least the definition came in under 140 characters — the limit for a tweet.
Chief dictionary editor John Simpson said they even waived the 10-year rule for new words given that tweeting "seems to be catching on."
The dictionary is desperately trying to stay relevant, having already scrapped their print edition for digital and even agreeing to add terms like "LOL" and "OMG."
On Monday, editors also added other digital jargon, such as "e-book" and "crowdsourcing."
Also, randomly, "to have a cow" gets an entry as a phrase "often associated with the character Bart from the animated series The Simpsons, but […] much older than the television show." Just thought you should know that.
First printed in 1884, the Oxford English Dictionary is upheld as the "definitive record of the English language."
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