“Tweet” has made it to the Oxford English Dictionary

Other words that were added include geekery, dad dancing, crowdsourcing, flash mob, e-reader, etc.

11:11 18 June 2013

Oxford English Dictionary has recently expanded its entries and some of the words that are included are “tweet” (noun and verb) and “follower” (noun) - both refer to social media terms which have become part of everyday life for a lot of people in the past six years.

Tweet is defined as posting on social networking site Twitter.

John Simpson, OED’s chief editor, admits that they bent some rules by adding the two words. He said: “This breaks at least one OED rule, namely that a new word needs to be current for 10 years before consideration for inclusion. But it seems to be catching on.”

Another word that was added is “dad dancing” which is defined as “an awkward, unfashionable, or unrestrained style of dancing to pop music, as characteristically performed by middle-aged or older men.”

“Crowdsourcing” and “flash mob” were also added.

The first one is defined as the practice of obtaining information or services by soliciting input from a large number of people, typically via the internet and often without offering compensation.

The latter was defined as a large group of people organised by means of the internet or mobile phones, or other wireless devices, who assemble in public to perform a prearrange action together and then disperse quickly.