Culture / 15 December 2022
Language puritans, look away now…
The latest edition of The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary has arrived, featuring 500 new words that are already causing divisions between orthodox wordsmiths and those keen to win the game at any cost. The last official Scrabble dictionary was published in 2018, and a few terms have become popular since then… Many are derived from slang of the yoof, including ‘adorbs’ (adorable), ‘bae’ (baby), ‘inspo’ (inspiration), ‘amirite’ (am I right?), and ‘vibing’ (feeling good). Other additions from the cultural lexicon include ‘hangry’, ‘guac’ and ‘zoodle’, as well as the internet-inspired ‘deepfake’, ‘unfollow’, and ‘autofill’. Word aficionado David Astle says the new list “signals how omnivorous our language has become”, with English constantly evolving thanks to influences ranging from text talk to foreign languages and cultures. While that may be true, we’re still not sure 2006’s addition of ‘za’ – short for pizza – was ever a thing people said or a conspiracy to get an easy 11 points…
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