The Oxford English Dictionary and the Collins Dictionary have both published their new shorter versions. A crop of words has been defined and introduced, replacing those words that are now deemed to be obsolete.
This is the age of the social network. ‘Re-tweet’ has been officially recognised by both dictionaries as a noun and a verb. It has been joined by an additional definition of ‘cougar’, a noun to describe an older women seeking sex with a much younger man, and ‘Textspeak’, a noun to describe the truncations and abbreviations that are used in text messages, many of which have gone into the language: Lol, WTF, M8 and so forth, as well as the mock-Jamaican patois that has become so infamous in light of the recent riots. And I’m afraid that the exploits of many of our most loved footballers will be immortalised with the formal recognition of the verb ‘to sext’, which, alarmingly, my spellchecker already acknowledges as legit.
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