Sexting, Noob, Jeggings Are All Words Now

Four hundred new words make it into the Oxford English Dictionary, and not all of them are terrible trends you wish would disappear.

Those crazy lexicographers at the Oxford English Dictionary have added “retweet,” “noob,” “sexting,” and “mankini” to the venerable reference work. Technology, as it always does, figures prominently among the new additions, although we're not really sure how “jeggings” (those leggings that look like jeans but totally aren't) ended up in the OED, nor “mankini,” that one-piece bathing suit worn by Sacha Baron Cohen's Borat character like five years ago. At least the OED threw in “cyberbullying” to compensate for the fashion-term crimes, and yeah, sure, “retweet” isn't really hurting anybody. “Noob” and “Woot” also got in there, which will probably effectively kill any currency those terms have among online gamers. The best entry, though, has to be “surveil,” because a) we needed a good verb for what all those CCTV cameras and internet police do, and b) we had no idea it wasn't a word already.