Words like "dubstep," "fangirl," "hashtag" and the infamous "selfie" are used pretty frequently in daily lingo, but now they can be considered real words.
Merriam-Webster has just released the 150 new words it will be adding to its dictionary this year. Time explains most of the words reflect "lasting cultural obsessions that have become widespread enough to earn a place in the big red book."
Of course, the Oxford Dictionaries beat Merriam-Webster to the punch when it named "selfie" its word of the year in November 2013.
Not all the new words are representative of technology, though. Words such as "turducken" — chicken stuffed in duck stuffed in turkey — and "pho" are food-related, while "baby bump" and "fangirl" have more to do with society's obsession with babies and celebrities, namely Kate Middleton and baby George.
"Yooper" was also added to the dictionary. According to USA Today, Yooper is a moniker for a longtime resident of Michigan's Lake Superior region.
Now, before all you people who aren't from Michigan roll your eyes, Yoopers are real, and the term has been around for quite awhile.
In March, The Huffington Post covered Steve Parks, the man who's been pushing for "Yooper" to be included in the dictionary since 2002. And Parks' persistence obviously paid off. That, or the folks over at Merriam-Webster learned to love the Yooper accent.
"The upper part, you know where that is?"
"And here's Wisconsin."
"No, no, Wisconsin is over there. That's not Wisconsin." (Via YouTube / that70sguy1975)
It grows on you, we promise. But some of the new words added to the dictionary are ones you probably thought were already in there.
Such as the mining technique "fracking," which has been around since the 1950s, and the ever-popular word "social networking," which Merriam-Webster describes as "the creation and maintenance of personal and business relationships especially online."
All 150 of the new words have been added to the 11th edition of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, which is already in the process of being shipped to retailers.
