A number of controversial new words have been added this year to Oxford Dictionaries Online, as the website’s editors try to keep the site’s database of vocabulary up to date with common usage.
These additions include ‘lolz’, which can, according to the website, either be used as a noun meaning ‘fun, laughter or amusement’ (e.g. “the image was immediately posted on Facebook, just for lolz”) or as an interjection: (“Tell him to call his wife if you see him! Lolz.”)
Other new words include ‘tweeps’, referring to Twitter followers (“he told his tweeps he was going to a Bruce Springsteen concert”). This is believed to be etymologically derived from a combination of ‘twitter’ and ‘peeps’ (the latter itself a modern abbreviation of ‘people’.)
Among the more unusual additions is ‘vajazzle’, used as a verb to mean ‘adorn the pubic area (of a woman) with crystals, glitter, or other decoration’ (e.g. “the glamorous world of fake tans and vajazzling”)
One third year classicist commented, “I think adding new words to dictionaries is a very dangerous business indeed. If we start expanding our lexicon willy-nilly, we risk diluting the etymological purity of our language.”
He continued, “Vajazzle is a particularly unwelcome addition: it is an unfortunate hybrid of the Latin-derived word ‘vagina’ (‘sheath’) and the Anglo-Saxon-derived ‘dazzle’. I would favour a purely Latin compound such as ‘vaginastellate’ (combining ‘vagina’ with ‘stellare’, to stud or bedeck with stars).
