The Oxford Dictionaries Online, one of the authorities on the English language, has once again taken steps to acknowledge how our obsession with the Internet is gradually altering our vocabularies — by adding things such as "NSFW," "ZOMG," "newb," and "Twittersphere" to its virtual pages.
The folks behind these additions explain that the "world of computers and social networking continues to be a major influence on the English language" and so continual edits of reference texts are necessary.
There is quite a range of words including several initialisms — abbreviations consisting of the initial letters of expressions — in this month's batch, but we've gone ahead and collected our favorite tech-themed additions:
- breadcrumb trail - (on a website) a series of hyperlinks displayed at the top of a web page, indicating the page's position in the overall structure of the site
- Cyber Monday - (in the US) the Monday following Thanksgiving, promoted by online retailers as a day for exceptional bargains
- infographic - a visual image such as a chart or diagram used to represent information or data: a good infographic is worth a thousand words
- insidery - proceeding from or reflecting an insider's knowledge or perspective: an insidery website that is widely read in the capital's political precincts insidery jargon
- lappy - a laptop: I'm going to transfer my CD collection to the lappy
- lifehack - a strategy or technique adopted in order to manage one's time and daily activities in a more efficient way
- meep - a short, high-pitched sound, especially as emitted by an animal or a vehicle's horn: the kitten released a terrified meep
- nekkid- (of a person) naked: some of the oldest photos in existence are of nekkid women
- network neutrality - the principle that Internet service providers should enable access to all content and applications regardless of the source, and without favoring or blocking particular products or websites
- newb - short for newbie it's easy enough for total newbs to pick up and play
- NSFW - not safe (or suitable) for work (used in electronic communication to indicate that a particular web page or website contains explicit sexual material or other adult content): if your friend just sent you something with NSFW in the subject line, don't go there
- paperless - relating to or involving the storage or communication of information in electronic form, rather than on paper: several of the utilities companies have switched to paperless billing
- permalink - a permanent static hyperlink to a particular web page or entry in a blog
- Twittersphere - postings made on the social networking site Twitter, considered collectively: the Twittersphere was abuzz when the story first broke
- unfollow - stop tracking (a person, group, or organization) on a social networking site: never unfollow someone just because they unfollowed you!
- ZOMG - (used especially on electronic message boards as a sarcastic comment on an inexperienced or overenthusiastic poster) oh my God!: ZOMG! ! I finally managed to reformat the file; the airport was hot and big, but there was really nothing that made me stop and think ZOMG FOREIGN COUNTRY!
These words are joining prior additions such as "♥," "OMG," "LOL," "tbh," "sexting," "buttload," and "nom nom."
Related stories:
- 'Sexting,' 'buttload' and 'nom nom' added to dictionary
- 'OMG,' and 'LOL' added to the dictionary
- 53 percent of Americans use Wikipedia
Rosa Golijan writes about tech here and there. She's obsessed with Twitter and loves to be liked on Facebook.