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Oxford English Dictionary adds over 1,000 updated entries

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2016-09-13 14:43Xinhua Editor: Xu Shanshan ECNS App Download

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) added more than 1,000 revised and updated entries, including 1,200 new senses, to its September update for people to explore.

Squee, an exclamation expressing delight or excitement, was added to the updated list, along with YOLO, moobs, gender-fluid, yogalates and Westminster bubble, to name just a few.

YOLO is the acronym for "you only live once," while moobs refer to male boobs. Gender-fluid means a person with a fluid or unfixed gender identity, while yogalates is yoga combined with Plates. Westminster bubble indicates an insular community of British politicians and civil servants who are out of touch with the experiences and concerns of the wider public.

Besides online slangs, some of the new entries have been introduced from other languages, including food terms like spanakopita, or Greek spinach pie, and kare-kare, a traditional Filipino stew.

The OED is updated every three months, and what makes the September update unique is that this month marks the centenary of the birth of Roald Dahl, a British author and screenwriter widely known by his famous children's book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

To mark this occasion and the publication of Oxford's Roald Dahl Dictionary, September's quarterly update to the OED contains a range of revised and newly drafted entries described by another newly added word "Dahlesque."

"Oompa Loompa" is one of the newly-added words with a sense of "Dahlesque delight in the bizarre." In the 1971 film adaption of Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Oompa Loompas are featured as knee-high beings with green hair and orange skin working in the factory run by Willy Wonka.

"Ever since the release of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, while a person may be likened to an Oompa Loompa in stature or industriousness, such comparisons are now much more likely to allude to the Day-Glo effects of some fake tanning products," said Jonathan Dent, a senior editor for the OED.

Some readers may say the updated entries and new words are "splendiferous (full of splendor)," but if they don't make any sense, just "fuhgeddaboudit (forget about it)!"

  

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