'Duck Face,' 'Hawt,' 'Lolcat' Make It Into Dictionary

Oxford added 1K new terms to online dictionary? Cool beans!
By Jenn Gidman,  Newser Staff
Posted Dec 4, 2014 1:16 PM CST
'Duck Face,' 'Hawt,' 'Lolcat' Make It Into Dictionary
"Duck face" is now an official entry on OxfordDictionaries.com.   (Shutterstock)

If you're a shiny bum taking a meal break and eating a mahoosively xlnt meatball sub al desko right about now, then you might also have a few minutes to scroll through the 1,000 or so new terms that OxfordDictionaries.com has added to its massive collection. Editors at Oxford University's online service say it's their biggest quarterly revision ever, NPR reports. Some of the terms may already be familiar to you if you're somewhat culturally current, including "digital footprint," "hawt," "Obamacare," and "duck face," which saw a 35% spike in average monthly usage compared to last year, the service's editorial director tells NPR.

There are also outliers you may not know at all: the aforementioned "shiny bum" (an office worker), "mahoosive" (exceptionally large), "xlnt" (excellent), and "al desko" (both an adjective and an adverb related to eating at one's desk) all make the additions list. We're not sure what took so long for some of the terms to ascend to dictionary ranking—haven't "cool beans," "Secret Santa," and "five-second rule" been around for ages?—but we can't figure this ish out. Let's just leave it to the experts. (It seems like just yesterday that "amazeballs," "YOLO," and "cray" caught the Oxford editors' eyes.)

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