Scrabble stans, yeehaw! Dictionary adds 500 new entries
Scrabble stans may feel like vibing with the latest sitch: Some 500 new words and their derivatives have been added to the board game's official dictionary.
The seventh edition of The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary, which has over 100,000 two- to eight-letter words, just got an update for the first time since 2018. The dictionary is a long-standing partnership between Hasbro and Merriam-Webster.
Recent additions include stan (extremely enthusiastic fan), bae (sweetheart), and deepfake (altered image or audio to misrepresent someone).
Shorthand like sitch (situation), convo (conversation), and guac (guacamole), as well as vax (giving someone a vaccine) also made it to the list.
Verb variations of existing words are taking center stage. These include torrented, torrenting, adulted, adulting, vibe, vibing, as well as atted and atting. (As in, "Don't at me, bro.")
Ixnay, the informal adverb for expressing disagreement, is already considered a verb, so ixnays, ixnayed, and ixnaying are now playable.
“We also turned verb into a verb so you can play verbed and verbing,” Peter Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster’s editor at large, told The Associated Press.
Internet slang terms are also waving, like welp ("well" variation expressing disappointment), dox (malicious publication of somebody's private information), and subtweet (insinuating/"parinig" tweet). The "uns" are also joining the fold, including unfollow, unsub, and unmute.
Though these terms are overly familiar and popular, they've never been Scrabble official until now.
An old-fashioned but well-known word in yeehaw has also become Scrabble official.
Sokolowski told AP that yeehaw, an expression of enthusiasm associated with cowboys, is more spoken than written. While it's something one may have heard, he said the word isn't read that often.
Compound words added to the dictionary include deadname, pageview, fintech, allyship, and babymoon. So are hybrid words like hangry and spork, as well as proper nouns gone generic like dumpster (large trash receptacle) and jedi (from Star Wars).
There are also foreign terms like hygge (Danish obsession with coziness), kharif (Indian subcontinent's fall harvest), and iftar (Muslim meal during Ramadan).
It's also order up for food-related words like horchata, kabocha, mofongo, zuke, zoodle, wagyu, queso, and marg/margarita.
One of the top-tier Scrabble strategies is clearing one's entire rack as a "bingo" for an extra 50 points. New valuable assets include boricua (Puerto Rico native) and vaquita (small porpoise).
New eight-letter words, which also allow clearing one's seven-letter tile, include fauxhawk (a hairstyle like Mohawk), embiggen (make something bigger), hogsbane (giant hogweed plant), and pranayam (yoga breathing technique).
Z, which amounts to 10 points alongside Q and only has a few entries, has a new one in zonkey (male zebra and female donkey hybrid). Moreover, its foil zedonk (female zebra and male donkey hybrid)—and even its variation zeedonk—are also among the new wacky entries.
Other new Z words that may come in handy for a word nerd are zoomer (Generation Z member) and zaatar (Middle Eastern spice blend).
The new Scrabble dictionary is now up for grabs on the Merriam-Webster website. It's available in trade paperback for $17.95 (P1,000) and hardcover for $27.95 (P1,600), excluding shipping fee.