Every year, the Oxford English Dictionary adds new words to our lexicon and every year the grammar nerds moan about the demise of the English language. Today is that day.
Now that I’m outside of the range of the social media preview text, because that would really ruin the point of this next part: I have to take a page from CNN’s playbook and their awesome piece in The Onion, and admit that the only reason I put “twerk” in the title was to get you to click on the link. Is it a cheap ploy? Yes. Did it work? You tell me.
What I can tell you is that twerk is not a word we need to immortalize. In fact, if we want to pretend like it never happened, I’d be okay with that.
Yet it can now be found a place right between ’twere and twerp. Other questionable additions include selfie, vom, and phablet.
Although, I can stomach all of those when put up against the greatest affront to human intelligence and the English language to make it into the dictionary this year: srsly.
Yes, seriously.
That is not a word. It’s a string of consonants. It is the abbreviation of another word. At best I’d say add it’s worth of a spot as a footnote the definition of its older more mature cousin. Seriously.
Although according to its entry it’s been around much longer:
Origin: late 18th century: first recorded in a manual on shorthand
The difference being that handwritten elimination of vowels is efficient, typed omission is just lazy.
What has the English language come to? I barely have the heart to tell my spell-check it’s wrong anymore.
Oxford English Dictionary I have only one unfortunate word for you: srsly?
________________________________________
All Things D: Please Welcome More Terrible Tech Terms to the Oxford Dictionary
…bi-daily smile…
