Keeping up with the ever-changing English language, Merriam-Webster recently announced that 455 new words will be added to the dictionary. Some of the terms have been in use for a while, such as faux-hawk, dad bod, and the sandwich known as a fluffernutter; others, including long Covid and
super-spreader, came on the scene during the pandemic. And then there are words and acronyms popularized on social media, such as TBH (short for “to be honest”), amirite (“am I right”), and FTW (“for the win”). Although English speakers have been saying many of these words for years, Merriam-Webster, the oldest dictionary publisher in the U.S., waits to see how a word evolves before deciding to add it to the dictionary. “The sort of fun part of the job is noticing new vocabulary and then watching it grow,” Peter Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster’s editor-at-large, told NPR. “We don’t want to add a term that might fall away from usage. We need a lot of evidence.”