Slacktivism, moobs and 'Merica have all made the cut in the Oxford English Dictionary's latest list of words to be added to the prestigious tome of the English language.
More than 70 editors have been working on a Third Edition of the dictionary since 2000, the first major overhaul since 1989. As part of the process, every three months the OED updates its online database with new words and new senses of existing words – this time, more than 500 of them.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Gender-fluid, meaning a person who does not define themselves as either male or female, was coined in 1987, but has only entered into common parlance in recent years as awareness of alternative gender identities becomes more mainstream.
Chef de mission, meaning "head of mission" in French, is likewise not a new term, but has been heard hundreds of times in Rio this summer as the title given to the heads of each participating nation's Olympic delegation.
The OED's practice of listing the origin of the words contained within also reveals that the most modern-sounding coinages can have surprising historical roots.
YOLO, for instance, "is traced back to its antecedent, the axiomatic you only live once (first used in a nineteenth-century English translation of Balzac's French 'on ne vit qu'une fois' in his Le Cousin Pons", writes senior assistant editor Jonathan Dent in a blog post announcing the new additions.
Here are the ten most interesting additions to the OED:
clickbait - online content whose main purpose is to attract attention and draw visitors to a particular web page
fuhgeddaboudit – used to indicate that a suggested scenario is unlikely or undesirable
human bean – a humorous alteration or mispronunciation of human being
'Merica – used to emphasise qualities that are stereotypically American
moobs – unusually prominent breasts on a man
skronk – used to describe dissonant or discordant sounds made by musical instruments
slacktivism – actions performed via the internet in support of a political or social cause but regarded as requiring little time or involvement
squee – an exclamation expressing delight or excitement
YOLO – "you only live once", used to express the view that one should make the most of the present moment without worrying about the future
Westminster bubble – the politicians, civil servants and journalists working in and around the Westminster parliament, characterised as an insular community