KBN Media: June 2011

As of this week, you’ll be able to justify the word “ZOMG” using the Oxford Dictionaries Online. Should you feel the need to alert the “Twittersphere,” you can spellcheck that, too.

The two words are on a long list of new additions to the dictionary, many of which have origins in technology and social media.

“The world of computers and social networking continues to be a major influence on the English language,” explains the online dictionary’s blog. (The Oxford Dictionary Online is affiliated with the OED, but they are not one and the same. The difference is explained here.)

Other newly official words include “social graph,” “permalink,” “paperless,” “lifehack” and “lappy.”

Dictionaries have been acknowledging emerging Internet vocabulary since 2004 or before. That year, “blog” made the top of Merriam Webster’s Word of the Year list. “Facebook” was Collins’s top word three years later, and in 2009, “unfriend” was the Oxford Dictionary’s top pick.

Perhaps “unfollow,” which Oxford also included in its recent online updates, will follow in its Facebook counterpart’s footsteps. ZOMG, that would be so cool.