21 August 2010 / REUTERS, LONDON
The ever-present hum of the vuvuzela during this year’s World Cup football catapulted the plastic trumpet to prominence and now it has earned a place in the Oxford Dictionary of English.
Vuvuzela is among 2,000 new words and phrases added to the third edition of the dictionary, published on Thursday, which is compiled from analysis of 2 billion words used in everything from novels to ınternet message boards. The credit crunch features heavily in this year’s additions, with terms such as “overleveraged,” having taken on too much debt and “quantitative easing,” the introduction of new money in to the money supply by the central bank, among those included.”Staycation,” a holiday spent in one’s home country, and “bargainous,” costing less than usual, also reflect the hot topic of belt-tightening among consumers during the economic downturn.The rise of “social media,” itself a new term, has spawned several additions, including “defriend,” removing someone from a list of friends or contacts on a social networking site, and “tweetup,” a meeting organized via posts on Twitter.
