‘YOLO’, ‘Clicktivism’, ‘Moobs’: Oxford Dictionary’s Got New Words

The word ‘moobs’ also features in the latest update, described as “embarrassing male appendages”.

The acronym YOLO (1996) is short for ‘you only live once’. (Photo: iStockphoto)

‘YOLO’ and ‘clicktivism’ are among more than 1,000 new entries included by the Oxford English Dictionary in its latest quarterly update.

The update also marks the birth centenary of British author Roald Dahl with a range of new words connected with his writing, including ‘splendiferous’, ‘human bean’, ‘Oompa Loompa’ and ‘Dahlesque’.

The Oompa Loompas, Willy Wonka’s diminutive workers, became fixed in the popular imagination as green-haired and orange-skinned creatures thanks to the 1971 film adaptation of Dahl’s popular book, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

The adjective ‘Dahlesque’ makes its first appearance in the Oxford dictionary this month with its first appearance dated back to 1983, when a collection of stories was praised for its ‘Dahlesque delight in the bizarre’.

These new additions provide Dahl fans with a golden ticket to the first uses and historical development of words like scrumdiddlyumptious, for those occasions when scrumptious simply won’t do, and the human bean, which is not a vegetable, although – according to the Dahl’s Big Friendly Giant - it comes in ‘dillions of different flavours’.

Jonathan Dent, Senior Assistant Editor of the Oxford English Dictionary

The acronym YOLO (1996) is traced back to its axiomatic ‘you only live once’ – first used in a nineteenth-century English translation of Le Cousin Pons, a French book by Honore de Balzac.

The word ‘clicktivism’ describes the use of social media and other online methods to promote a cause. Histories of related words such as slackivism, slacktivist, and clicktivist, are also explored in this update.

New entries also include words such as gender-fluid (first recorded in 1987), ‘Merica (a truncated form of ‘America’) - often used ironically to draw attention to stereotypical American ideals, institutions, or traditions and British political buzzword Westminster bubble – first used in the Birmingham Post in 1998.

The word ‘moobs’ also features in the latest update, describing “embarrassing male appendages”.

The Oxford English Dictionary is updated four times a year, every March, June, September and December since the year 2000.

The material added to the dictionary includes revised versions of existing entries, as well as new words and senses.