Good news, smartphone-addicted narcissists. At long last, “selfie” has been added to the 11th edition of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, having already been declared 2013’s international word of the year by Oxford Dictionary and responsible for breaking the Internet thanks to Oscar host Ellen and her crew of celebrity photo whores at the last Academy Awards. We’re looking at you, Kevin Spacey.
Selfie joins an esteemed list of 149 other words added to the lexicon log, including hashtag, baby bump and Auto-Tune, which makes us suspect the 11th edition of the Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary was supposed to be published five years ago but got delayed considering how long some of these words have been around. Other new entries include tweep, unfriend, paywall, crowdfunding and big data.
Yes, that’s a lot of computer-savvy words, you and your Google Glass-adorned head are probably saying. But there’s other less techy but equally annoying words on the list such as steampunk, freegan and dubstep, which coincidentally are also the top three ingredients to the worst house party ever.
And while we’re all for expanding our vocabulary and enriching the English language with new words, K&K still feels snubbed that our yearly submissions to the clearly uptight panel at Merriam-Webster continue to get ignored, namely free-range crotch chicken, penile hydra, man-gina and bwanff (the sound a Hostess Twinkie makes when you’re under the influence and hold it up to your ear and squeeze it in your bare hand).
