Strange words like vape, indyref and bae have succeeded in getting place in the latest edition of the Oxford Dictionaries, a new report has revealed.
According to the report, the word ‘vape’ is announced as the the international word of the year by the Oxford Dictionaries.
‘Vape’, which connotes inhalation and exhalation of the vapour produced by electronic cigarettes or e-cigs, has been chosen as the international word 2014 due to the meteoric rise in the popularity as well as the scrutiny over the health benefits of electronic cigarettes.
The dictionary explains the word’s usage in the noun and verb form. When it is used as a verb, vape means inhaling and exhaling the vapour produced by e-cigs and when it is used as a noun, it can refer to the devices themselves.
Another word to find place in the popular and most trusted dictionary is ‘Bae’, which is originated in African-American English. The word is used to describe endearment for a romantic partner. ‘Bae’ is the popularly used word on social networking sites along with RandB and hip-hop music.
Bae was generally believed to have been used as a shortened form of babe or baby. It is also interpreted as an acronym for “before anyone else.”
The third word that has got entry into Oxford dictionary is indyref, which is used to describe the Scottish independence poll. Some of the other shortlisted words included in the disctionary this year are Slacktivism, Normcore, Contactless and Budtender.
The Oxford Dictionaries New Monitor Corpus, a research programme, selects the candidates for the international word of the year. The research programme every month collects approximately 150 million English words in use with the help of automated search criteria to scan the online content.
The researchers used the sophisticated software that helps them to identify new and emerging words in English on a daily basis and also examine their frequency of usage.