Astroturfing, Bigender, Glanceable, Hyperlocal & More New Words Added To The Dictionary

OAKLAND, Calif., May 6, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Today Dictionary.com, the leading online and mobile resource for everything word related, announces the latest additions to its dictionary, with a focus on new and updated technology terms, among hundreds of other new words and thousands of revised definitions to reflect the ever-evolving English language.

Ripped straight from national news headlines, the words dox, cybercrime, and revenge porn have all been added to Dictionary.com in this update. The search volume of these words and others, including blackhat, dark web, and hyperlocal, all indicate increasing interest in technological threats and trends. New devices, especially smartwatches, are generating an entire lexicon of new terms like glanceable and new definitions for terms like parallax, gesture, and haptics.

"Many of these new words show that the line continues to blur between our lives online and our vernacular, with personal and enterprise security top of mind for consumers, as shown by their searches," said Michele Turner, CEO of Dictionary.com. "One of our favorite recent additions is a concept very familiar to many of us these days: anecdata is anecdotal evidence based on personal observations but presented as fact."

Several other words also make their Dictionary.com debut, including some that may have autocorrect working overtime, such as astroturfing, brogrammer, and mRDC, and other existing terms that have acquired new meanings, including basic, ship, and swat.

Another trend gleaned from Dictionary.com data was a rise in searches for gender-related words, including agender, bigender, and gender-fluid. As people encounter new terms to describe gender identity, they turn to Dictionary.com for clarity, making these words an important addition to the update.

Dictionary.com uses a number of tools to determine which words are widely used and should earn a place in the online dictionary. Lexicographers review and discover new words in everything from academic journals, pop-culture sources, and user suggestions, while vetting new candidates in a corpus of contemporary language use that contains more than 19 billion words. Dictionary.com stands apart from other dictionaries with its access to billions of data points in search lookups, and its lexicographers analyze this search data to better understand interest and demand.

A selection of the recently added words with brief definitions can be found below. Full dictionary entries for the new words can be found on Dictionary.com.

agender: relating to a person who does not have a specific gender identity or recognizable gender expression.

anecdata: anecdotal evidence based on personal observations or opinions, random investigations, etc., but presented as fact.

astroturfing: the deceptive tactic of simulating grassroots support for a product or cause undertaken by people or organizations with an interest in shaping public opinion.

basic: characterized by predictable or unoriginal style, interests, or behavior.

bigender: relating to a person who has two gender identities or some combination of both.

blackhat: a hacker who violates the security of a system for personal profit or for the gratification of causing damage.

brogrammer: a male computer programmer who is characterized as a bro.

crash blossom: an ambiguously worded headline whose meaning can be interpreted in the wrong way, as "Missing Woman Remains Found."

cybercrime: criminal activity or a crime that involves the Internet, a computer system, or computer technology.

dark web: the portion of the Internet that is intentionally hidden from search engines, uses masked IP addresses, and is accessible only with a special web browser.

dox: to publish the private personal information of (another person) without the consent of that individual.

esports: competitive tournaments of video games.

gender-fluid: relating to a person whose gender identity or gender expression is not fixed and shifts over time or depending on the situation.

glanceable: relating to information on an electronic screen that can be understood quickly or at a glance.

gesture: a particular movement of the fingers or hand over a screen, used to control or interact with a digital device.

haptics: the study or use of tactile sensations and the sense of touch as a method of interacting with computers and electronic devices.

hyperlocal: focused on a very small geographical community, as a neighborhood.

microaggression: a subtle but offensive comment or action directed at a minority or other nondominant group that is often unintentional or unconsciously reinforces a stereotype.

mRDC: mobile remote deposit capture: a method of depositing a check by using a mobile device to scan an image of it and transmit the image to a bank.

parallax: a 3-D effect observed when images and other elements in the foreground of a screen move at a different rate than those in the background.

revenge porn: sexually suggestive images of someone, typically a former romantic partner, that are posted online without the person's consent.

ship: to take an interest in a romantic relationship between fictional characters or famous people.

smartwatch: a computing device that resembles a wristwatch and is attached to a band worn around the wrist.

swat: (especially among online video gamers) to cause a SWAT team to be deployed on an unsuspecting victim by falsifying a threat, often as a punishment or retaliation.

About Dictionary.com

Dictionary.com, an IAC (NASDAQ: IACI) company, is the world's leading, definitive online and mobile resource for everything word related. We provide tens of millions of global monthly users with reliable access to millions of definitions, synonyms, audio pronunciations, example sentences, translations and spelling help through our services at Dictionary.com, Thesaurus.com, and Reference.com.  Our leading mobile applications for reference and education have been downloaded more than 90 million times.

SOURCE Dictionary.com

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