Binge-watch. Yolo. Side boob. Adorbs. Listicle. These are just some of the new ‘words’ added to the online version of the Oxford English Dictionary. OxfordDictionaries.com updates every quarter, giving insight into current language trends. Oxford noted that the use of “binge-watch” increased fourfold in February, when House of Cards season two was released, and tripled in June, coinciding with the release of Orange Is The New Black. “Yolo,” a hugely popular word among teenagers, is an acronym for you only live once. A “listicle” is an internet-based article presented in bullet-point. “Adorbs” is an adjective meaning cute. And side boob is, well, side boob.
Oxford Dictionaries editor Katherine Connor Martin said: “One of the advantages of our unique language monitoring program is that it enables us to explore how English language evolves differently across the world. Many words are used in similar frequencies in the UK and US. However, some new slang and informal words catch on much more quickly in a particular variety of English. Side boob is more than ten times more common in the UK than in the US (although this is due in part to its frequent use in the British media), whereas adorbs is used about four times more often in the US as in the UK.”
