To Scrabble fanatics, big gifts sometimes come in small packages. The word "te" as a variant of "ti," the seventh tone on the musical scale, is a hardworking little gem among 5,000 words that will be added to "The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary," out Aug. 11 from Merriam-Webster.
The dictionary's last freshening up was a decade ago. New entries in the forthcoming book include texter, vlog, bromance, hashtag, dubstep and selfie.
The new words add about 40 pages to the Scrabble-sanctioned dictionary, which already lists more than 100,000 playable words. Definitions are kept to a minimum but parts of speech and whether a plural is available are noted.
To be included in the 36-year-old book — this is the fifth edition — a word must be found in a standard dictionary, can't require capitalization, can't have hyphens or apostrophes and can't be an abbreviation, in addition to being two to eight letters, reflecting the seven tiles players draw plus an eighth already on the board they can attach a long word to for bonus points.
Merriam-Webster didn't identify all 5,000 new words but released a list of about 30 that also include: Beatbox, buzzkill, chillax, coqui, frenemy, funplex, jockdom, joypad, mixtape, mojito, ponzu, qigong, schmutz, sudoku and yuzu. Geocache was also added, voted into the dictionary by the public during a Facebook contest in May.
IN-DEPTH
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