With modern language changing by the day and teenagers adding to our ‘trendy’ vocabulary by the day, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) definitions have had to speed up the rate at which it is revised in order to keep up with the rate at which language is changing.
With only four letters of the alphabet managing to be complete in the last decade, staff are being encouraged to change their old methods in order to concentrate on words whose meanings are changing the fastest.
Words including “sick” and “book” which describe the term “cool”, are amongst many that are being included in the revised edition. John Simpson, the chief editor of the OED said: “Our team has become more and more experienced as we go along, in what is the first complete revision of the dictionary since it was first published in 1928”.
With the introduction of the internet and its world wide connection, the rate of language change has accelerated. “There are dozens of websites that celebrate new language” says Tony Thorne, of Kings College London. “They are encouraging people to play with it and we are therefore required to keep up with this”.
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