Merriam-Webster adds word first used on ‘The Simpsons’ to dictionary

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (WWLP) – Merriam-Webster announced this week that hundreds of new terms and words have been added to its dictionary, including popular slang, gaming and digital-world terms.

A total of 690 words have been added, all of which are said to have demonstrated their “widespread use” in recent years.

“We’re very excited by this new batch of words,” said Peter Sokolowski, the editor at large for Merriam-Webster, in a statement included with Wednesday’s press release. “We hope there is as much insight and satisfaction in reading them as we got from defining them.”

Among the new terms, many were adopted from slang, including “doggo,” another word for dog, or “GOATED,” an acronym-based word to describe something considered to be the “greatest of all time.”

Technology and science were also major driving factors in the latest update, with words like “smishing” (SMS phishing) and “UAP” (unexplained aerial phenomenon) making the cut.

Other notable new terms include:

• rizz, a slang term meaning “romantic appeal or charm”
• padawan, a word borrowed from the “Star Wars” universe to describe a younger, inexperienced person
• simp, a verb meaning “excessive devotion to or longing for someone or something”
• bussin’, an slang adjective meaning “extremely good”
• mid, another slang adjective meaning mediocre
• nerf, a verb often used by gamers, meaning “to reduce the effectiveness of”
• rage quit, a verb describing the action of abruptly quitting an activity out of anger
• thirst trap, a slang term used to describe a photo or video shared to social media in an effort to attract attention

In addition to the above-mentioned words, Merriam-Webster also used its latest update to legitimize a popular “Simpsons”-ism coined in a 1996 episode: “cromulent.”

“Fans of ‘The Simpsons’ will appreciate cromulent (a synonym of acceptable or satisfactory) invented by that show to describe embiggen, another Simpsons-ism that already appears in the Merriam-Webster.com dictionary.”

“Cromulent,” meanwhile, has already enjoyed legitimacy in the Oxford English Dictionary and Dictionary.com.

More words added in Merriam-Webster’s latest update can be found at the dictionary’s official site.