Depending what your feelings on language are, this story will either make you celebrate the evolving nature of English or weep into your coffee.
Publishing house Harper Collins is giving people the chance to officially get their favourite social media terms into the Collins English Dictionary. Yup, that means words like “tweeps” could officially become part of the English language.
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The publisher says that after it saw words and acronyms (like OMG and LOL) emerging from technology and social media to become “official” in the English language, it “decided it was time for words like ‘tweeps’ and ‘cyberstalking’ to have a better chance at a lasting place in our vocabulary”.
If you have any pet online terms that you’d like to see get a little dictionary love then all you have to do is head over to the Colins Dictionary site when the campaign opens on Monday.
After six weeks, the submission will close and publishers will review the words as they would with any other word put up for submission to determine which one(s) will make it in the dictionary.
The publisher says it hopes to take the campaign viral by inviting “word nerds, celebrities, bloggers and writers” to give their input on words with the hashtag #WhatsYourWord on Twitter.
The more frequently a word is used, it says, the more likely it is to be included in the dictionary.
