‘Tweetups’, ‘unfriend’ added to Oxford English Dictionary

LONDON - The increasing popularity of Internet has led to the inclusion of ‘Tweetups’ and ‘unfriend’ in the Oxford Dictionary.

While ‘Unfriend’ means removing someone as a ‘friend’ on a site such as Facebook, ‘Tweetups’ is used for meetings or other gatherings organised by means of posts on the social networking service Twitter.

Other words in the list compiled by Oxford University Press, come from the economy, fashion, and politics, which include “great recession”, and “Zombie Bank”, a financial institution whose liabilities are greater than its assets, but which continues to operate because of government support.

The past year also saw some of the old words coming into use again due to recent events, reports the Telegraph.

Redact, which means to censor or obscure part of a text for legal or security purposes, has gained prominence due to the parliamentary expenses scandal.

The word “snollygoster”, meaning a shrewd, unprincipled person, has been applied to politicians.

Words of the Year 2009:

Bossnapping - noun: (in France) the prevention of senior managers from leaving company premises for a period of time by their employees, in order to protest about large-scale redundancies and cutbacks

Zombie bank - noun: a financial institution whose liabilities are greater than its assets, but which continues to operate because of government support

Jeggings - plural noun: close-fitting leggings made of fabric that resembles denim in appearance [from jeans + leggings]

Tweetup - noun: a meeting or other gathering organised by means of posts on the social networking service Twitter. [from tweet + up on the pattern of MEETUP]

Staycation - noun: a holiday spent in one’s home country rather than abroad, or one spent at home and involving day trips to local attractions

Simples - exclamation: used to say that something is very easy to achieve [from the 'compare the meerkat' TV advert]

Great Recession - noun: term for the current recession, modelled on the Great Depression.

Freemium - noun: a business model in which some basic services are provided for free, with the aim of enticing users to pay for additional, premium features or content

Paywall - noun: a way of blocking access to a part of a website which is only available to paying subscribers

Unfriend/defriend - verb: to remove from one’s ‘friends’ list (e.g. on a social networking website)

Tag cloud - noun: a visual depiction of the word content of a website, or of user-generated tags attached to online content, typically using colour and font size to represent the prominence or frequency of the words or tags depicted.

Slashdot effect - noun: the slowing down or crashing of a small website due to a huge increase in traffic when the website is linked to another, much more popular one.

Snollygoster - noun: a shrewd, unprincipled person, especially a politician

Redact - verb: censor or obscure (part of a text) for legal or security purposes.

Epigenome - noun: the pattern of chemical switches in all 2000 types of human cell that indexes genetic information. (ANI)