Thursday, August 25, 2011

'Bromance', 'social media', 'tweet' added to Merriam-Webster dictionary

"Bromance," "social media," "tweet" and over 150 more new words have been added to the pages of the Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary.



In a statement, Merriam-Webster's Editor at Large Peter Sokolowski said, "From the dramatic events of the Arab Spring to the scandal that brought down Congressman Anthony Weiner, tweet is a word that has been part of the story."



"We've been tracking words like social media and tweet for years, of course, and now we feel their meanings have stabilized enough to include them in the dictionary," he added.



Some of the words that also made it to the dictionary include the following:



Americana -- "a genre of American music having roots in early folk and country music"

boomerang child -- "a young adult who returns to live at his or her family home especially for financial reasons"

bromance -- "a close nonsexual friendship between men"

cougar -- "a middle-aged woman seeking a romantic relationship with a younger man"

crowdsourcing -- "the practice of obtaining information from a large group of people who contribute online"

duathlon -- "a three-part long-distance race with a running phase, a bicycling phase, and a final running phase"

first bump -- "a gesture in which two people bump their fists together"

helicopter parent -- "a parent who is overly involved in the life of his or her child"

m-commerce -- "a business transaction conducted using a mobile electronic device"

parkour -- "rapid and efficient running, climbing, or leaping over environmental obstacles"

robocall -- "a telephone call from an automated source that delivers a prerecorded message to a large number of people"

walk-off -- "ending a baseball game immediately by causing the winning run to score for the home team in the bottom of the last inning"



Earlier this month, Oxford Dictionary also released the list of new words that included "cyberbullying," "retweet" and "sexting" among others.