No, Twerk Isn't In the Oxford English Dictionary Yet

By now you’ve no doubt heard the buzzworthy story about the words "buzzworthy," "bitcoin," and "twerk" making it into the Oxford dictionary.

But just in case you’re a functioning relic of prescriptivism and this news is getting your tweeds and tweets all a-tangled, take comfort in knowing that these words aren’t going into the fabled “the accepted authority on the English language,” the Oxford English Dictionary, just yet. They have made the first steps towards joining the canon, however, with their inclusion in the Oxford Dictionary Online.

'Twerk' and 'Selfie' have been added to the Oxford English Dictionary. The Oxford English Dictionary has been added to 'ROFL books' list.

— Kenzo (@GhantaGuy) August 28, 2013

The distinction between the OED and the ODO is more than just how access them, especially now that the OED is online, albeit behind a paywall. If you’ll accept the analogy, the OED is a history book, the ODO is journalism. Lemme explain.

The OED is a historical dictionary, that records the meaning of words spanning from Old English to contemporary, and how the meaning changes over time. When you look up a word in the OED, you get the first chronological meaning first, not the most common. So taking “English” as an example, we find “Of or belonging to England (or Britain) or its inhabitants.In early use sometimes spec. designating inhabitants of England of Anglo-Saxon descent, in contradistinction to those of Celtic, Scandinavian, or Norman descent.”

This definition is followed by an example from the Old English medical text, Bald’s Leechbook, which was compiled in the ninth century. The example reads “Wiþ utwærce genim unsmerigne healfne cyse, do englisces huniges iiii snæda to, wylle on pannan oþ þæt hit brunige.” So it's thorough, but maybe not what you need all the time.

The ODO, on the other hand, records English as it is written and spoken today. The most common meaning of a word is first, and the less common sense of the word follows later. The entry for English starts with defining it was a noun: “1. the West Germanic language of England, now widely used in many varieties throughout the world.”

The barrier of entry into the ODO is simply use. “New words, senses, and phrases are added to Oxford Dictionaries Online when we have gathered enough independent evidence from a range of sources to be confident that they have widespread currency in English,” said Angus Stevenson of Oxford Dictionaries Online. “On average, we add approximately 1,000 new entries to Oxford Dictionaries Online every year, and this quarter’s update highlights some fascinating developments in the English language. Portmanteau words, or blends of words, such as phablet and jorts, remain popular, as do abbreviations, seen in new entries such as srsly and apols.”

And the new ODO words certainly were gaining widespread currency. According to Yahoo! Search, the top-searched new Oxford terms over the past month on the search engine were:

• Twerk

• Selfie

• Blondie

• Emoji (77% of searches for [emoji] come from Yahoo! users 35+)

• Derp

• Geek Chic

• LDR

• Pixie Cut

• Girl Crush

• Mooc

• BYOD

Although the wheels of the OED may crank slower, they only crank in one direction. Words in the OED are in there for all time, while words—as they fall out of usage—can fall out of the ODO.

So if you’re worried that “twerk” is a flash in the pan, so far you’re right, and Oxford is with you on it. But someday, decades from now, when your great-great-grandchildren are reading President Cyrus’s account of her early years, and need to figure out what she did to make a nation gnash its teeth in August 2013, that’s when it will matter whether twerk made the OED. I know, that sounds like an unlikely scenario—who thinks kids will be reading next year, much less decades in the future?

The prescritivist philosophy, which wants to exclude slang from dictionaries, is falling out of favor and it's not much of a stretch to attribute this to dictionaries breaking free of their old restraints—namely being big heavy objects made out of wood pulp. For what it's worth, the OED has never been a prescriptivist dictionary. According to their website:

We never leave words out of dictionaries on the grounds that they aren't ‘good English’. Similarly, if a word is used only in very informal contexts, or only by specific groups of people, or if it is offensive in some way, we make this clear in the dictionary entry. (If a dictionary is written for children at the primary school level, however, some of the more ‘adult’ words will be excluded.) New words will be added if we have enough evidence of their use in print or online sources.

The page admits that "It's usually true to say that a lexicographer will want to include more words than is physically possible," but notes with a hint of triumph that now that dictionaries are being published electronically, space is less of a concern.

Consider this the reading of your Miranda rights, English speakers: Anything you say can and will make it into the Oxford English Dictionary, forever. Twerk on, Mother Tongue (v. 2012).