Oxford English Dictionary breaks its rule to include tweet in their dictionary

Updated on: Wednesday, June 19, 2013

The word 'tweet' in the sense of social networking has entered the hallowed pages of the Oxford English Dictionary with the lexicon breaking its rule that a new word needed to be in use for ten years before inclusion.

John Simpson, Chief Editor, Oxford English Dictionary, said, "The noun and verb tweet (in the social-networking sense) has just been added to the OED."

"This breaks at least one OED rule, namely that a new word needs to be current for ten years before consideration for inclusion. But it seems to be catching on," Simpson said.

Though the word 'tweet' is already in the OED in relation to bird song, it now has an additional official definition in the June 2013 edition.

Interestingly the OED had already added 'retweet' as far back as 2011.

Other words to have made an entry into the dictionary along with tweet are: dad dancing, epic, fiscal cliff, flash mob, follow, geekery, pay day lending, the silent treatment.

Twitter is a real-time information network that connects people to the latest stories, ideas, opinions and news. One needs to simply find the accounts and follow the conversations.

At the heart of Twitter are small bursts of information called Tweets. Each Tweet is 140 characters long.

Twitter has about 340 million tweets posted every day.

Many international celebrities, including Presidents, Prime Ministers, movie stars, pop icons, sports stars etc have their own twitter accounts with thousands of followers.

Some other technology words that enter the June 2013 edition, include big data, crowdsourcing, e-reader, mouseover, redirect (the noun), and stream (the verb).

Oxford English Dictionary breaks its rule to include tweet in their dictionary

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