I’m in UR dikshunary speekin UR languagez. That could be the catch phrase of geeks ad cyber culture junkies everywhere as more and more technological terms and cyber slang gets into mainstream use.

How mainstream? Well, Merriam-Webster has deemed these terms worthy of inclusion in the company 2008 dictionary. How geeky are the words? Considering that webinar, fanboy, pretexting, malware and netroots are on the list - pretty geeky.

I’m surprised none of the Twitter words made the list, though I predict an appearance at some point of the term Fail Whale in some kind of mainstream media acknowledgement. It isn’t the first time Merriam-Webster has included technological words in its pages. As part of 2007’s dictionary revamping, “w00t” was declared the word of the year.

How does a word make it into the dictionary? Merriam-Webster requires that a word start being used in conversation or daily use without any need for explanation. I’d say webinar made that mark some time ago, but it only just got included in the yearly upgrade/new word count for whatever reason.

Talking about the plethora of geeky cyber culture words on the list: “There’s a kind of collective genius on the part of the people developing this technology, using vocabulary that is immediately accessible to all of us,” John Morse of Merriam-Webster said. “It’s sometimes absolutely poetic.”

Next year we’ll have to try and get one of the silly social media building catch words included. I’m thinking that we may see words like Tweeple in the next edition, assuming we can keep the Fail Whale at bay long enough to see Twitter survive that long.

Did any of your favorite words make the list? Did they miss any that are key? What words would you add for next year? Let me know in the comments.

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Entry was posted on Friday, July 11th, 2008 at 12:58 am under Internet.  Print This Post

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