Scrabble Adds 300 Words to Official Dictionary

published 25 September 2018

Yesterday, Merriam-Webster, the dictionary company behind Scrabble's word bible, announced its latest dastardly plan to break up couples, friends, and families everywhere: Scrabble is adding 300 new words to its official players' dictionary. New words include bitcoin, listicle, bizjet, zomboid, sheeple, and yowza, which, ew—another word, incidentally, that's been given the OK (yes, that one is scrabble official now too, so no more waiting around for an "a" and a "y" to make OK okay to play).

Sorry, there's just so much room for wordplay here, but let's not bury the lede: EVERYTHING IS TERRIBLE.

According to Merriam-Webster, the additional words are a reflection of how our culture, and the English language, has evolved. "For a living language, the only constant is change. New dictionary entries reflect our language and our culture, including rich sources of new words such as communication technology and food terms from foreign languages," Peter Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster's Editor at Large, said in the press release. "The Official SCRABBLE Players Dictionary evolves to keep up with English as it is used today." This means "twerk," "frowny," and "puggle" are now Scrabble official as well as "bibimbap," "sriracha," and "macaron," the latter of which I admit, I support, because yum.

FACEPALM (is that how I feel or another word that's been added? Good question, because BOTH).

Anyway, besides the fact that some of the more terrible parts of the English language have made it into a game's dictionary, which all feels like an act of quixotry (365 points), this move by Merriam-Webster is obviously yet another attempt to sabotage happy-yet-competitive couples. Let me bring to your attention The Great Scrabble Incident of 2016 when I tried to play "qi" and my boyfriend refused to accept it and went on to "win" the game. Surprisingly, we're still together (though we haven't played Scrabble since...), but just wait until I try to play "qapik" for a triple score.

Yowza.

Sally is the Editor in Chief of Marie Claire where she oversees coverage of all the things the Marie Claire reader wants to know about, including politics, beauty, fashion, and celebs. Holmes has been with Marie Claire for five years, overseeing all content for the brand’s website and social platforms. She joined Marie Claire from ELLE.com, where she worked for four years, first as Senior Editor running all news content and finally as Executive Editor. Before that, Sally was at NYMag.com's the Cut and graduated with an English major from Boston College.

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