Viewpoint: New words added to the Oxford online dictionary

Dr Paul Cooper is a Lecturer in English Language in the University of Liverpool’s Department of English

“The new words which have been added to the Oxford online dictionary illustrate the wonderful creativity and versatility of English.

Words like yolo and adorbs demonstrate language change processes that have applied to English words for hundreds of years.  We don’t say omnibus for bus, so why not clip adorable down to adorbs?

“The word hench seems to derive from henchman, and mansplain is a blend of man and explain – just as brunch is a blend of breakfast and lunch.  English is also very good at forming constructions by analogy – hence binge-watch is apparently formed by analogy with binge-drink.

”By monitoring the frequency of these words’ occurrences, the OED online team are displaying a usage wins attitude to the addition of new words to the dictionary.  As ever with language change, features which become widespread and frequently used over time often become part of a language.

“Adding words on the basis of frequent and common usage sometimes attracts criticism, though.  Since (at least) the publication of Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary in 1755, ‘the dictionary’ has been seen as something of an ‘authority’ on ‘what English words are’.  This can sometimes lead people to think that some new words shouldn’t go into the dictionary as they are ‘slang’ or ‘lazy’ or ‘incorrect’.

“But, seeing as how we are quite happy with words like fridge, asap, or smog, in time, we’ll probably be ok with these new words too.”