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?
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All Things D: Please Welcome More Terrible Tech Terms to the Oxford Dictionary
…bi-daily smile…