Woot! Oxford English Dictionary adds cyberbullying, sexting, retweet

For its 100th anniversary, the Oxford English Dictionary is proving it’s still hip with the times by adding some tech-centric terms to its pages.

Cyberbullying, sexting, retweet, textspeak and woot have joined the ranks as real words, along with some 400 new entries the OED has added to its 12th edition.

“These additions are just carrying on the tradition of a dictionary that has always sought to be progressive and up to date,” OED said in an online statement, describing itself as a word curator that had always “sought primarily to cover the language of its own time.”

That includes kicking out some “tremendous” words that have fallen out of use, the OED regretfully noted, including brabble (“paltry noisy quarrel”) and growlery (“place to growl in, private room, den -- what we might call a man cave these days”).

“But preoccupations of today’s Generation Y have opened the door to some equally colourful vocabulary,” the OED said. The dictionary had already added OMG, LOL and FYI to its pages earlier this year.

Among the new terms:

Retweet

verb: (on a social networking service Twitter) repost or forward (a message posted by another user)

Sexting

noun: the sending of sexually explicit photographs or messages via mobile phone

Cyberbullying

noun: the use of electronic communication to bully a person, typically sending messages of an intimidating or threatening nature

Woot

exclamation: (especially in electronic communication) used to express elation, enthusiasm, or triumph

Textspeak

noun: language regarded as characteristic of text messages, consisting of abbreviations, acronyms, initials, emoticons, etc...