“Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas: I wish, however, that the instrument might be less apt to decay, and that signs might be permanent, like the things which they denote.”

Eighty-six new words were added to the Collins online dictionary on Monday, and I’d like to think that Samuel Johnson would have bashtagged the shit out of a few of them. The dictionary, published by HarperCollins, has been accepting suggestions for its online edition since 17th July. They’ve received 4,000 responses so far, which their team of lexicographers has whittled down to eighty-six. Some — notably those related to technology — are useful additions right now, though if this were a print dictionary they might not survive the next revision. Others feel less necessary. In the more worthy field, see:

crowdfunding
noun. the funding of a project by a large number of supports who each contribute a small amount

livestream
verb. to broadcast (and event) on the internet as it happens
noun. a live broadcast of an event on the internet

webapp
noun. an application program that is accessed on the internet

Under ‘irritating but indisputably in frequent use’, see:

amazeballs
exclamation (slang). an expression of enthusiastic approval

photobomb
verb (informal). to intrude into the background of a photograph without the subject’s knowledge

tweetup
noun (slang). a meeting at which poeple who communicate with each other via the social networking site Twitter meet face to face

The democratic impulse has also enabled Collins to clear up a pressing lexicographical issue: the correct spelling of zhoosh, as in zhoosh up (though personally I’d have replaced that second ‘s’ with a ‘z’).

They forfeit any brownie points earned, though, for allowing impactful, a hate-crime of a word. Johnson might have said:

When we see men grow old and die at a certain time one after another, from century to century, we laugh at the elixir that promises to prolong life to a thousand years; and with equal justice may the lexicographer be derided, who being able to produce no example of a nation that has preserved their words and phrases from mutability, shall imagine that his dictionary can embalm his language, and secure it from corruption and decay, that it is in his power to change sublunary nature, and clear the world at once from folly, vanity, and affectation.

… but even he might have made an exception in this case.