The bookish geeks at the Oxford English Dictionary have announced that 'retweet' and 'sexting', words casually bandied about on Twitter and mobile phones, are now so common as to be worthy of a place in the hallowed book.

Sneak is pleased to see this, although while he was aware that 'retweet' means repeating someone's message on Twitter, he wasn't quite so au fait with the term 'sexting' until he undertook some horrific Google searches to arrive at his own definition:

"Sexting [verb] pronounced: sex-ting. The act of electronically distributing pictures of ones intimate areas to a potential mate via the medium of mobile or electronic communications. Usually undertaken by 11-14 year-old chavs or US politicians. Used in a sentence: Rob and Sandra fell in love after sexting one another on their iPhones."

It's not a huge surprise that these terms have made it into the OED as the growth of mobile communications and social networks has given rise to a wealth of jargon such as '@reply' and 'follow Friday' on Twitter, and 'poke' and 'like' on Facebook.

Other notable entries into the OED were 'auto-correct', 'cyberbullying' and 'woot'.

Another benefit of this, aside from enriching the glorious English language, is a few new words for Scrabble games with the family. Lol!

18 Aug 2011