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Could 'Noob' or 'Defriend' Be the One-Millionth English Word?

by Terrence O'Brien on May 13, 2009 at 01:47 PM


The English language is about to pass a historic milestone, at least according to the Global Language Monitor, a group that monitors language. The one millionth English word is nearly upon us. What this will be isn't known yet, but in the running are a number of words straight from the Internet, including "defriend" and "noob."

The standard used by the Global Language monitor requires that the word show up in the media and on social networking sites 25,000 times before it is considered a part of the language, but that doesn't necessarily mean it'll be showing up in your copy of the Unabridged Webster's Dictionary anytime soon.

Even if "defriend" (dropping a person off your friend list on Facebook) or "noob" (an insult hurled at new members of an online community) did make it into dictionaries, they would hardly be the first words with online origins. Webster's word of the year in 2007 was w00t, a "word" (and we use that term loosely) that became popular in online games like 'World of Warcraft.' And in 2008, it was "overshare," a reference to people's tendency to share mountains of mundane and tedious details about their life on blogs, Twitter, and Facebook. And don't forget that Google has found it's way into the dictionary as a verb, as has "meh," which traces its origins to 'The Simpsons,' but was popularized online before slowly working its way into everyday speech.

To be honest we're a little amazed that "noob" hasn't been recognized as a word yet. It's been around since pretty much the dawn of the Internet; it developed during the days of text-based online games called MUDs (grandfather of today's MMORPGs). [From: Telegraph, Via: Joystiq]

Tags: defriend, dictionary, english, language, noob, techterms, terms, top, trends, words

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