Ain’t Ain’t A Word…But Twerk Is…Kind Of

Remember back in the day when you’d use the word ain’t, and some witty friend would come right back at you and say, “Ain’t ain’t a word because it ain’t in the dictionary.” Well, if a witty friends tries to correct you as you discuss the Video Music Awards and Miley Cyrus’s infamous twerk, let them stand corrected as it is now, one of the most recently added phrases by the Oxford Dictionaries Online.

But, don’t get too crazy about it (or angry), because there’s a small technicality. Twerk and selfie were added to the Oxford Dictionaries Online, which is a little different than the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). The OED follows strict guidelines for adding words, and does so annually and releases their update in June of each year. They also remove words that have become obsolete and in 2011, received a lot of attention when they removed cassette player , explaining that the word was not need in the abridged version.

This past June, however, they did add some key tech-related terms including: big data , crowdsourcing , e-reader , mouseover , redirect (the noun), and stream (the verb). The update also included a silent addition of the word tweet, which broke one of OED’s rules that the word must be in use for at least 10 years. It’s clear that our growing use of technology and social media is changing how we connect, but also how we speak and is evolving our language at a rapid pace.

A few other, commonly, or maybe not-so-commonly used phrases were added to the online dictionary, which focuses on updating regularly and providing words used in the contemporary English language.

In the Oxford Dictionaries Online quarterly update, technology-based phrases added to the database included:

• MOOC (massive online open course)


• bitcoin (digital currency)


• Internet of things (a development of the Internet in which everyday objects have network connectivity)


• click and collect


• BYOD (bring your own device)


• hackerspace

We can only imagine the amount and type of words that will be popping up in the next few years and those that will be kicked to the curb and become the cassette player and brabble (both removed in 2011) of the next generation.

via Business 2 Community http://www.business2community.com/oddball/aint-aint-wordbut-twerk-iskind-0601480?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=aint-aint-wordbut-twerk-iskind