The dictionary is getting lit.
Wading into the political waters, the Oxford English Dictionary announced it will be including the words “woke” and “post-truth” in its latest update.
Citing woke’s popularization in 2008 by soul and R&B artist Erykah Badu in her song “Master Teacher,” the Oxford English Dictionary described the word’s transformation to how it’s now associated with the Black Lives Matter movement.
“The original meaning of adjectival woke (and earlier woke up) was simply ‘awake,’ but by the mid-20th century, woke had been extended figuratively to refer to being ‘aware’ or ‘well informed’ in a political or cultural sense,” they stated. “In the past decade, that meaning has been catapulted into mainstream use with a particular nuance of ‘alert to racial or social discrimination and injustice.'”
The enduring reference tome even delved into the first known case of woke being used figuratively when African-American novelist William Melvin Kelley used it to describe “how white beatniks were appropriating black slang at the time,” the Oxford English Dictionary states.
Meanwhile, “post-truth,” the 2016 word of the year,” made its official mark on the pages of the book, joining over 1,200 new words and phrases.
Defined as “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping political debate or public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief,” post-truth is the perfect word to sum up why strangers on Facebook are suddenly telling you they’re going to drink your snowflake tears.
Lastly, and literally lastly, is the Zyzzyva, a genus of tropical weevils that has unknowingly unseated zythum, a type of malt beer that is equally apathetic to dictionaries, as the very last word to appear in the Oxford English Dictionary.
The insects are native to South America, hang out near palm trees and no one has any idea where its name came from.
