The number of new words in "Official Scrabble Words", released by
British publishing house Collins, is double the amount added to the
previous edition — boosted by slang, pop culture and the web. PHOTO |
COURTESY
LONDON
"Twerking",
"hashtag" and "facetime" are among 6,500 brash new entries in the
Scrabble "Bible" that reflect the Internet age but have left
traditionalists squirming.
The number
of new words in "Official Scrabble Words", released by British
publishing house Collins, is double the amount added to the previous
edition — boosted by slang, pop culture and the web.
"The
Internet age has revolutionised the inclusion of slang in dictionaries
and Collins' 'Official Scrabble Words' is no exception," said Helen
Newstead, head of language content at Collins.
"Now
people use slang in social media posts, tweets, blogs, comments, text
messages, you name it, so there's a host of evidence for informal
varieties of English that simply didn't exist before."
The
Collins dictionary, used by enthusiasts of the board game across the
world, excluding North America, is updated every four to five years.
Some
of the highest-scoring new words that are permissible include
"quinzhee", an Inuit snow shelter, and the Yiddish term "schvitz", to
sweat.
Also included are onomatopoeic interjections, or words created from sounds such as "augh", "blech", "eew" and "yeesh".
Not
everyone is happy with the changes, with purists objecting to new
slangy terms such as "lolz", to denote laughter, "cakehole" for mouth,
and "lotsa", for lots of.
Sue Bowman,
membership secretary of the Association of British Scrabble Players,
told the Daily Telegraph newspaper that the new words were an "abuse of
the English language".
"They seem very artificial.... It is mainly youth culture and American influence," the 67-year-old said.
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