Dictionary: a book that lists the words of a language in alphabetical order and gives their meaning. In recent times a whole new spate of words have been added to the English versions of this book. "Omnishambles", a word coined by the writers of The Thick of It and memorably used by Ed Miliband in reference to the 2012 budget, has just been added to the Oxford Dictionaries online (meaning: a situation that has been comprehensively mismanaged, characterised by a string of blunders and miscalculations). "Selfie" (a photograph taken of oneself, typically with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded on to social media) and "food baby" (a protruding stomach caused by eating a large quantity of food and supposedly resembling that of a woman in the early stages of pregnancy), have also been officially recognised as "real words".
What is a real word anyway? If we go by the definition, words are simply sounds or a combination of sounds that represent a thing, person, place, situation or emotion. If this is the case then the dictionary should probably be twice the size it already is to accommodate all of the many unlisted words that English-speaking populations use to communicate. Informal linguistics, or slang as it is more commonly known, has been used to communicate since language began, and often proves easier to grasp than some of the discombobulating words the English dictionary stores within its bowels.
Whether it is to converse among a select group, or simply because certain slang terms have a more expressive ring to them, these new informal words are constantly being made up, used and then fall out of fashion again before dictionary compilers even pick up on them. My friends and I have always been creative with the English language, creating our own dialect called Rangoose, which derived from the need to talk in code so as to not alert prying ears to our shenanigans. Although if it isn't Rangoose or OED-approved English that we're speaking, then it's a combination of both with whatever new lingo we've managed to pick up on our travels.
The stream of new slang words never seems to stop. Growing up in the 1990s certain slang was used by inner city youth all the time. "Breakers" and "wicked" were both used to describe something positive or desirable. Out of the two, only the latter can be found in the dictionary as an informal term for excellent or wonderful, which in itself deserves some credit as it only had the power of word of mouth to become popular. Although you could argue that "wicked" was a word already, certain terms become more widely used as they transcend communities by being so befitting to the expression or emotion they communicate.
But why has it taken certain words like "selfie" a fraction of the time to acquire the same level of legitimacy? The answer to that, like so many other perplexing issues in modern times, can be accredited to the rapid advancement of communicative technology. As new behaviours are constantly being created, it's in our nature to look for ways to define them linguistically. Social media has sped up the process of popularising terms as words are now easier to share.
There will always be certain words that stay underground because of their niche use. But it only takes a very popular global icon like Miley Cyrus to get involved in twerking and ensure a term that has been around for years gets certified by the good folk at the OED.
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