For the first time in nearly a decade, the Scrabble dictionary has been updated.
The fifth edition of Merriam-Webster's The Official Scrabble Player's Dictionary, which will hit stores Aug. 11, will feature 5,000 new words including "frenemy," "bromance," and "selfie." Scrabble Word Finder has been updated for the Internet and millenial age to help the 76-year-old game stay relevant, Reuters reported.
"These are words that have become part of the culture, part of the languages and part of the dictionary," Peter Sokolowski, editor at large for Merriam-Webster, told the New York Daily News.
The announcement marks the Scrabble-sanctioned dictionary's first big update since 2005 and comes days before the 2014 National Scrabble Championship in Buffalo, N.Y. on Aug. 9. However, the 5,000 new words added to Scrabble dictionary won't be sanctioned for official use in club and tournament play until Dec. 1, Time reported.
"The list is, to me, a great step forward," Grant Barrett, a San Diego dictionary editor and co-host of the nationwide public radio show "A Way with Words," said. "I think you've got to add the new words. Otherwise you risk this turning into an archaic game that nobody wants to play because the daily language isn't accepted there. It's got to keep up."
Scrabble purists and older players of the word game said the new slang words being added to the word-game's dictionary is not offensive, as long as they have "staying power," Reuters reported.
"[It's] a bit of a balancing act for us," John Chew, co-president of the North American Scrabble Player's Association, told the Daily News. "We don't have any issue with slang, we just want to make sure the words are going to be around in the long run."
The new words -- which also include "Hashtag," "emo," "bling" and "po" -- add about 40 pages to the Scrabble bible, which already lists more than 100,000 playable words.
