Amazeballs, side boob and humblebrag are among the latest selection of words to make it into the Oxford Dictionaries Online, the sister publication of the Oxford English Dictionary.
The new pool of words includes acronyms such as WDYT (what do you think?) and SMH ("a handy initialism for 'shaking my head' when the word 'no' just doesn't express your disapproval strongly enough"). YOLO (you only live once) appears to have become the "carpe diem" of the acronym generation.
There are also abbreviations such as adorbs (adorable) and cray (crazy), as well as insults such as hot mess and douchebaggery.
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Dozens of people have taken to Twitter to complain about the "desecration of the English language", but others have expressed interest in how the language is developing.
Katherine Connor Martin, Oxford Dictionaries editor, says their language monitoring programme enables them to explore how English language evolves differently across the world. Some new slang catches on much more quickly in different places, she says. For example, side boob (the side part of a woman's breast exposed by a revealing item of clothing) is at least ten times more common in the UK, while adorbs is used about four times more often in the US as in the UK.
Here are just ten words from the new collection, helpfully placed into example sentences by Oxford Dictionaries:
Pogonophobia: (noun) extreme dislike of beards – "my pogonophobia possibly stems from my inability to grow one"
Amazeballs: (adjective) extremely good or impressive; amazing – "she looks amazeballs"
Binge-watch: (verb) to watch multiple episodes of a television programme in rapid succession – "you can binge-watch the entire season with this set"
Bro hug: (noun) a hug between two men – "they had a little bro hug in front of the cameras"
Doncha: (contraction) don't you – "Doncha trust me?"
Spit take: (noun) an act of suddenly spitting out liquid one is drinking in response to something funny or surprising – "If I'd been drinking something when she said that, I'd have done a spit take"
Humblebrag: (noun) an ostensibly modest or self-deprecating statement whose actual purpose is to draw attention to something of which one is proud – "All of the dresses I thought about wearing are too big! #humblebrag"
Hench: (adjective) strong, fit and having well-developed muscles - "he's looking pretty hench"
FML: (abbreviation) f*** my life! Used to express dismay
Hot diggity: (exclamation) used to express excitement or delight – "hot diggity damn, this thing does everything"
