The Oxford English Dictionary has released its quarterly update – adding more than 500 new words, phrases, and senses to its ranks.
‘Play play’ tops the list, meaning ‘to fool about, mess around, waste time’ or ‘to act frivolously or teasingly’.
‘Glitchiness’, meanwhile, is the ‘quality of having or being prone to glitches.’
And while we all know the delicious meaning of ‘jelly’, the definition has been updated to include an adjective for ‘jealous’.
While new words usually relate to the present day, Philip Durkin, Deputy Chief Editor at the Oxford English Dictionary, explains that many have their roots in old English.
‘This quarter’s release of newly revised etymologies once again provides snapshots of the early linguistic history of English,’ he said.
‘There is a very decent crop of words first recorded in Old English (from the earliest surviving records to approximately 1150).
‘Words that can be traced back to the reconstructed Proto–Germanic immediate ancestor of English include: drop; glee and its obsolete derivative glew meaning “to play an instrument; to rejoice; to delight or gladden (a person)”.’
The Oxford English Dictionary has released its quarterly update – adding more than 500 new words, phrases, and senses to its ranks
Many of the new additions to the dictionary focus on the future.
A ‘futurescape’ is a depiction or representation in books, films, art, etc., of what the world (or aspects of it) could look like in the future.
This can be used interchangeably with ‘futurama’ – a term dating all the way back to 1939.
Here in the present day, many of us are guilty of ‘doomscrolling’, which the Oxford English Dictionary defines as ‘the action of scrolling continuously and compulsively through large quantities of upsetting or worrying online news, or content on a social media platform.’
‘The verb doomscroll appeared one day after the noun, but it took until 2020 before a person was described as a doomscroller,’ it explained.
‘That all three uses first appeared on Twitter (as X was called then) will come as no surprise, we’re sure.’
Meanwhile, one of the most exciting new additions is the word ‘romantasy’.
‘Originally this word was used to describe a fantastical or idealized story or situation involving romance,’ Oxford English Dictionary explained.
‘More recently, it has come to be known as a subgenre of fiction that combines elements of both the romance and fantasy genres, typically focused on a romantic narrative that takes place in a fantasy setting.’
Another book–themed addition is DNF, which stands for ‘did not finish’.
‘Originally used as a classification when for one fails to finish something, typically a race, in later use it has come to be used about books too,’ Oxford English Dictionary said.
Finally, one of the most whimsical new words is ’tilt–a–whirl’ – an American word for the fairground ride commonly known as the waltzers.
‘Since 1966, tilt–a–whirl has also been used figuratively to describe “something, esp. an experience or event, characterized by repeated abrupt or unpredictable changes”,’ the experts added.
‘Might the English language be described as a tilt–a–whirl?’
