Webster's adds tech words

The latest edition of Merriam-Webster's dictionary has been enlarged to include several words taken from the world of social media in a bid to keep up with the way language has changed under the influence of online technology.

"So many of these new words show the impact of online connectivity to our lives and livelihoods," the editor-at-large for Merriam-Webster, Peter Sokolowski, said.

"Tweep, selfie and hashtag refer to the ways we communicate and share as individuals," he added.

"Selfie," defined by the dictionary as "an image of oneself taken by oneself using a digital camera," was already admitted to the online version of the Oxford English Dictionary in 2013, where it was named word of the year.

The word "tweep," which the dictionary says first emerged in 2008, refers to a user of the Twitter online message service. Twitter is also likely the main origin of the word "hashtag," defined as "a word or phrase preceded by the symbol # that classifies or categorizes the accompanying text."

Other social-media-related terms include "crowdfunding," "catfish" (in the sense of someone who "sets up a false personal profile on a social networking site"), and the term "social networking" itself.

The dictionary has included other technological terms among the more than 150 definitions added to the 2014 updated version. These include "fracking," and "cap-and-trade," which has to do with systems controlling carbon emissions.

New culinary terms include pho, "a soup made of beef or chicken broth and rice noodles," and turducken, "a boneless chicken stuffed into a boneless duck stuffed into a boneless turkey."

Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, a subsidiary of Encyclopedia Britanica Inc., has approximately 165,000 entries and 225,000 entries. It was first published in 1806 by Noah Webster, and was influential in standardizing American spelling and speech.

tj/rc (Reuters, AP, AFP)