Tuesday, March 5, 2013

"Tweetable" makes it to The Oxford Dictionary!


LOL. Hashtag. Meme.
 
Social media jargon is getting more and more popular.  But when one of these words is accepted into something like the Oxford Dictionary, things are brought to a whole new level.
 
That's what happened last week with one trendy word: "Tweetable"
 
Here's the link to the ever-so-formal definition, in case you haven't used the word.
 
But let's look into this a little further, The Oxford dictionary defines "tweetable" as: suitable for sharing on the social media site Twitter.
 
Makes sense to us, right?
 
But we aren't the people who are looking up words in the Oxford Dictionary!  If someone is going through the trouble to include more current, tech words in the dictionary, I think they should describe them in a way that is less reliant on tech knowledge.  Is someone who looks up "Tweetable" going to know what "Twitter" is?  Probably not.
 
I say either define it in layman's terms or don't define it at all.  After all, I can't stand when I look up a word I don't know and then part of the word is referenced in the definition. This might not be exactly the same issue, but it's similar!
 
Congrats to "tweetable" for becoming a real word!  But a big question mark goes to Oxford Dictionary for their partially self-referencing definition.
 
How would you best define "tweetable"?

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