The new Scrabble words make you fear for the English language
Players of the popular word game can now score points with lolz, shizzle and cakehole
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.Lolz, shizzle and cakehole - just three of 6,500 new words to have made it into the Scrabble lexicon.
The new additions to the Collins Scrabble word list draw heavily from social media slang and text-speak and include obvs (obviously), ridic (ridiculous) and dench (excellent).
Other new words in the list reflect modern society, trends and events, such as twerking, devo (short for devolution, as in Devo Max), vape (to inhale from an electric cigarette), onesie, shootie (fashionable shoe that covers the ankle), cakeages (restaurant charges levied for serving cake brought in from outside), and podiumed (often used at sporting events, particularly the Olympics).
The new word list also recognises the role technology continues to play in our lives with the addition of facetime, hashtag, tweep, and sexting.
Onomatopoeic interjections listed in the dictionary are allowed in Scrabble and now players can add exclamations such as augh, blech, eew, grr, waah and yeesh to their game.
Some of the highest-scoring new words are quinzhee (29 points - an Inuit snow shelter) and schvitz (24 points - to sweat).
Helen Newstead, head of language content at Collins, said: "Dictionaries have always included formal and informal English, but it used to be hard to find printed evidence of the use of slang words.
"Now people use slang in social media posts, tweets, blogs, comments, text messages - you name it - so there's a host of evidence for informal varieties of English that simply didn't exist before."
(Additional reporting by PA)
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments