'Frenemy,' 'selfie,' 'bromance' among the 5,000 new approved Scrabble words
"Chillax," everyone: The latest edition of Merriam-Webster's Official Scrabble Players Dictionary will hit stores Aug. 11, featuring new words like "frenemy," "bromance," "buzzkill," and, of course, "selfie."
Scrabble players will have 5,000 new words to use in this update, the first since 2005. "These are words that have become part of the culture, part of the language, and part of the dictionary," Peter Sokolowski, an editor at large for Merriam-Webster, told the New York Daily News.
Scrabble purists say these slang words being added to the dictionary isn't offensive, as long as they have lasting power. "[It's] a bit of a balancing act for us," says John Chew, co-president of the North American Scrabble Player's Association. "We don't have any issue with slang, we just want to make sure the words are going to be around in the long run."
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The most important part of the game is to make the most of the words you can use, and here's a friendly hint from the Daily News: If you really want to score big, play new word "quinzhee" — the Inuit word for a combination igloo and hole in the ground — in the top, right corner. That will net you 401 points and bragging rights for days.
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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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