The dictionary also took on the challenge of defining skibidi, a word popularised in online memes, as a term which had "different meanings such as cool or bad, or can be used with no real meaning".
Then is it even a word?
Sometimes I make nearly incomprehensible screeches. They have no meaning, but something they express how I feel, is that a word?
Also tradwife is a shortform, it’s not a word.
I make nearly incomprehensible screeches ... is that a word
No (or at least it depends on your definition of a word). For being added to the Cambridge dictionary, it is not in general or widespread usage. Your random screech is not historically or socially worthy of being documented. It likely has no suitable examples for coinage. You screech has no linguistic staying power, it wont be used by you and others in a few years time.
English does not have an academy. It does not have a rulebook that defines exactly what it is. Unlike languages like French (as an example ... with all of the social linguistics that comes with that). The dictionary is a record of how the language is being used by a notable proportion of the population.
Skibidi is one of 6000 words being added, this year alone.
tradwife is a shortform, it’s not a word
There are lots of shortform, abbreviations and colloquialisms in the dictionary. If they are individually used/cited as words on their own basis then they can be listed in the dictionary.
i think if you think of the dictionary as the big list describing how words are actually being used recently instead of the big list defining how words should be used and this makes a lot more sense. does that weaken the meaning of the word 'definition?' a little bit but its high time it had its comeuppance, used way too literally imo... figuratively speaking, of course. we're not french, the language isnt set in stone.
Skint is also a short form. It’s been in the dictionary a while.
Hasn't skint been around for a century? It's not quite a short form though, it's a variant of skinned, and almost the same length.
Is it nottheonion material, or is it a dictionary doing what dictionaries are supposed to do?
Feels a bit premature
A word used with defined spelling and pronunciation, used with a general meaning should be in dictionaries, especially with online dictionaries making the process much easier than print. I hear that word used enough with the same general meaning [Cool, rad, amazing]. it is a word and dictionaries are there to catalog the definitions of words.
Yeah but you are forgetting that I hate the idea of validating young people
I was gonna respond to comment op with, yeah but its our boomer moment. So this is 100%.
Everyone thinks they'll be different, Everyone thinks its novel to cringe at the new and not want to validate it, but we did it with papyrus and slate and we'll whinge and cringe at the newfangled ludicarcy of the new generation always. (I will also specifically comment that having 3, 4 year olds running a circle around me and chanting "Chiken jockey, sigma, skibidi" also makes me uncomfortable but for different reasons)
"skibidi toilet" is now 2.5 years old. We've had younger words get into the dictionary.
I think more interesting than new words added that I've heard but wouldn't use myself would be words that they've decided to remove because of disuse, because I probably haven't heard those words ever.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/word-matters-podcast/episode-61-words-dropped-from-the-dictionary
There are also terms like hepatectomize. Do you know that one? (...) It means to excise the liver of, it used to be in the Unabridged, but it was removed a few years ago because it's just too rare. Now both hepatectomy and hepatectomized, the adjectival participle, they continue to be included in the Unabridged and in the Collegiate and in the merriam-webster.com dictionary, but hepatectomize, apparently no such luck anymore.
So, they do drop words, but only when they're not used anymore. But they argue "If it's in Shakespeare or Chaucer, people read it and will look it up". They did drop "Neighbor-stained" though, because even those shakespeare uses it once, nobody else does.
Peter Sokolowski: And if enough people start using neighbor-stained, that will go back in too.
Emily Brewster: Yeah. Let's not wish that though.
I wonder if the Oxford or Cambridge dictionary actually ever removes words? I mean, if you were doing research and looking at text written in old English, when you want to be able to look up a word that was no longer in use?
Maybe, like, an old dictionary.
Maybe they don't, and just label them archaic. It's not like they have a maximum word limit.
That's so delulu skibidi tradwife