Geek-centric words sexting, woot, textspeak and retweet are among the latest terms to be added to the Concise Oxford English Dictionary.

“These additions are just carrying on the tradition of a dictionary that has always sought to be progressive and up to date,” Angus Stevenson, editor of the latest edition, wrote in a blog post discussing the 400 new entries to the reference guide.

The tech-infused update comes just five months after the wordsmiths behind Oxford dictionaries welcomed fun web shorthand exclamations LOL, OMG and ? to the lexicon, further evidence that the internet and social media are speeding the evolution (some would say the devolution) of the English language.

Another, more-somber addition to the 12th edition of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary is the term cyberbullying, which has become a near-constant buzzword in the news lately thanks to cases like Lori Drew’s.

The Concise Oxford English Dictionary (not to be confused with the larger Oxford English Dictionary, which added LOL, OMG and ?) also refined some definitions of existing words to place them in a modern context. For example, follower now means “someone who is tracking a particular person, group, etc. on a social networking site.”

Some of the new definitions now available include:

1. Cyberbullying (noun): The use of electronic communication to bully a person, typically by sending messages of an intimidating or threatening nature: children may be reluctant to admit to being the victims of cyberbullying

2. Woot (exclamation, informal): Used to express elation, enthusiasm, or triumph: I definitely get Fridays off, woot!

3. Retweet (verb): (On the social networking service Twitter) repost or forward (a message posted by another user): tweet the URL of your posting: people love to retweet job ads. Also: (noun) a reposted or forwarded message on Twitter: traffic spiked quickly and contained a mix of retweets and original posts

4. Sexting (noun, informal): The sending of sexually explicit photographs or messages via mobile phone: like it or not, sexting is part of growing up in 2010

5. Textspeak (noun): Language regarded as characteristic of text messages, consisting of abbreviations, acronyms, initials, emoticons, etc.

[via The Telegraph]

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