As a child, we were always told that if a word wasn’t in the dictionary, it wasn’t really a word. Times have changed considerably. On April 20, Merriam-Webster announced the addition of 2,000 words and phrases that would make our English teachers twitch. Some of the words added to the English language were made acceptable by pop culture; like FOMO (fear of missing out), ICYMI (in case you missed it) and TMI (too much information) for example. Other words include ‘hella’, ‘wacky tobacky’, ‘bitcoin’, ‘revenge porn’, and my favorite ‘nomophobia’ – the fear of being without a working cell phone.
“The new entries and senses offer a kind of snapshot of how exactly our language expands,” Merriam-Webster says. “It doesn’t happen quickly—we monitored many of these words for years before they’d met our criteria for entry—and it’s pushed by various fields and endeavors.”
Terms regarding to the LGBTQ community have also been added. For example: Cisgender (of, relating to, or being a person whose gender identity corresponds with the sex the person was identified as having at birth) and genderqueer (of, relating to, or being a person whose gender identity cannot be categorized as solely male or female).
