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'Retweet,' 'sexting' added to Oxford English Dictionary, alongside words that are actually words
Every so often, Chuzzlewitt, Figglesworth and the rest of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary's Council of Elders gather around a stone in Puddingshire, where they come up with ways to modernize the English language. New words are added, archaic ones are cut, goats are sacrificed. It's all very messy -- especially when internet lingo gets involved, as is so often the case. It's no different this year, with the latest class of inductees including words like "retweet," "sexting," and "cyberbullying." Also making the cut is "woot" (which is apparently spelled without zeroes) and "surveil," which was added primarily as a reflection of today's privacy-conscious society. In fact, the dictionary's purveyors say they make their decisions based not on intuition or cage match results, but on cultural ubiquity, which they gauge using a database of more than two billion words culled from contemporary sites. So if you're wondering why words like "jeggings" and "mankini" are now part of the English tome, you have only the internet to blame.
Behind the Mask: Cliques are the bane of roleplaying
Although Demonflame has just launched and is quite an entertaining little addition, there have been a few things in Champions Online that have been bothering me. I spend a large amount of my time in CO roleplaying, and I have a pretty tight circle of friends. The problem is that I tend to be sort of exclusive when it comes to roleplaying with people. I'm not openly mean in most situations, but I tend to avoid certain kinds of people. You know the types: godmodders, selfish jerks, and people with only the thinnest grasp of the English language. Most of my friends kind of tolerate these people, but I am pretty adamant when it comes to keeping them out of my RP. Unfortunately, this kind of makes me a tool. No one wants to roleplay with idiots and godmodders, but no one wants a loudmouthed jerk making a big deal out of everything, either. This realization made me understand why people form tight, exclusive cliques and how to get involved in them.
'Noob' among list of potential one-millionth English words, logic 'pwned'
Though we're just as befuddled as you likely are by the news, the UK's Daily Telegraph recently pointed out that at 10:22AM on June 10th, the English language officially inducts its one-millionth word. Still not befuddled? Candidates for this esteemed position are products of our social media-obsessed age: "defollow" and "defriend," each referring to the act of removing a friend or follower on popular social networking services Twitter and Facebook, respectively. Worse? The third "word" in contention for the position: "Noob." We'll just let that sink in for a second. Back? Okay, so, according to The Global Language Monitor, words must be "used 25,000 times by media outlets, social networking websites and in other public sources" in order to be considered for official inclusion in the English language. If that number accounts for online multiplayer participants across PC and consoles, we're willing to bet that the word "noob" was used more than 25,000 times today alone. Here's hoping the misspelled portmanteau gets "pwned" by logic and doesn't end up as an official English word. [Via VG247]
