“Awesomesauce”, “hangry”, “beer o’clock” and “butt dial” are just a few of the 1,000 new words and phrases added to Oxford Dictionaries. The editors said the changes reflected evolving cultural, political and social norms.
Oxford Dictionaries is the branch of the Oxford family that focuses on modern language. It includes words which people are using now, but which would not necessarily be added to the Oxford English Dictionary.
New words in the Oxford Dictionaries
Awesomesauce: Extremely good; excellent
Bants: Playfully teasing or mocking remarks exchanged with another person or group; banter
Beer o’clock: An appropriate time of day for starting to drink beer
Bruh: A male friend (often used as a form of address)
Brain Fart: A temporary mental lapse or failure to reason correctly
Butt Dial: To inadvertently call someone on a mobile phone in one’s rear trouser pocket.
Cupcakery: a bakery that specializes in cupcakes
Deradicalization: The action or process of causing a person with extreme views to adopt more moderate positions on political or social issues
Fat-shame: Cause someone judged to be fat or overweight to feel humiliated by making mocking or critical comments about their size
Hangry: Bad-tempered or irritable as a result of hunger.
Mx: A title used before a person’s surname or full name by those who wish to avoid specifying their gender or by those who prefer not to identify themselves as male or female
David Astle is a self-confessed word nerd. As a dictionary expert, he said he was surprised that phrases like “beer o’clock”were not included in the dictionary sooner. “I’ve been suffering from beer o’clock for years and so have a lot of my peers,” hesaid. “It seems wine o’clock is the snobby update and it’s welcome, of course.“I love the fact that language can be so flexible and shape-shifting and accommodating.” But Mr Astle does have reservationsabout the inclusion of some words.“I think a lot of the textagrams like NBD, which stands for No Big Deal, at first I thought that could have stood for No BloodyDoubt,” he said. “So I think words that have potential confusion like that should be treated with a little bit more caution.
”Mr Astle has also warned that many of the new words might not stay in the dictionary in the future because they might justbe part of a fad. “A lot of these words that have been given a nod by Oxford Dictionary, there’s a waiting room going on andthese words may not last the distance.“Even though it seems that they have been awarded the mantle of publication, I still think there’s a kind of proving groundthat will apply to so many of these new arrivals and that’ll occur in the next decade,” he said.
“Whether we really do want tohave “awesomesauce” around, it may go the same way as the “amazeballs”. I think a “mic drop” makes a lot of sense to mebut “bants” and “ruly” I think probably need a little more oxygen.”
