In what reads like a tween’s text message chain, Scrabble has added words like ‘bae’ and ‘stan’ to the board game’s official dictionary.
Scrabble has announced the addition of around 500 new words and variations to its official dictionary. The new vocabulary will make included words valid for the seventh edition of the popular board game, and add to the 100,000 words already included in the Scrabble dictionary. The new words were added through Scrabble’s ongoing partnership with dictionary makers, Merriam-Webster, who last updated the game’s vocabulary in 2018.
The new additions read like the text messages of a chronically online Gen-Zer, encompassing a range of acronyms, shorthands, and terms popularised in the mid-2010s and beyond. The resulting dictionary is compiled through Miriam-Webster’s scanning of the often-refreshed online database. It comes a few years after Scrabble erased hundreds of words deemed racially or otherwise offensive.
So, word ‘stans’ can rejoice, for the ‘totes’ ‘adorbs’ board game has ’embiggened’ its lexicon, ‘yeehaw’ (that sentence could now win you the game). Scroll down for some of the highlights from Scrabble’s latest batch of new words.
Among the 500 Scrabble word additions were a slew of internet terms. These include the words ‘deepfake’, ‘subtweet’, and ‘atting’ (a verb that describes using the ‘@’ symbol to tag someone online). Elsewhere, the dictionary now includes various ‘un’ terms like ‘unfollow’, ‘unsubscribe’, and ‘unmute’. This is the sort of terminology that’ll have your grandfather clenching his fist (don’t @ me).
This is what my dog thinks, too. #feedme #imhungry #dogs #scrabble #secretmessage pic.twitter.com/q8TVeitlVk
— Heather Weidner (@HeatherWeidner1) November 12, 2022
Scrabble’s new dictionary now includes a range of abbreviations including words like ‘sitch’ (situation), ‘guac’ (guacamole), ‘convo’ and ‘inspo’, ‘adorbs’ (adorable) and and ‘amirite’. Elsewhere, the new batch of words features decidedly Gen-Z slang words including ‘Stan’ (to be an obsessive fan), ‘fauxhawk’ (a style of haircut), ‘vibing’, ‘adulting’ and ‘bae’ (shorthand for babe/partner).
Meanwhile, Miriam-Webster’s were seemingly hungry at the time of their dictionary update, including food-related terms like ‘hangry’ (hunger/anger), ‘spork’, ‘marg’ (margarita), ‘wagyu’ and ‘kombucha’. Like any language, some words defy classification, with the dictionary’s miscellaneous terms including the exclamation ‘yeehaw’, and the Star Wars phenomenon of the ‘Jedi’.
