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Scrabble dictionary adds lotsa totally ridic new words

The new additions to Collins Official Scrabble Words include "lotsa," "twerking," "sexting," "blech" and "shizzle."

By Ben Hooper
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NEW YORK, May 22 (UPI) -- The official dictionary for perennial board game Scrabble announced 6,500 new words, including "lolz," "Facetime," "emoji" and "ridic."

The Collins Official Scrabble Words, the official guide to words allowed for international tournament play for the Hasbro game, released a new edition this week with 6,500 new words, which also include "lotsa," "twerking," "sexting," "blech" and "shizzle."

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Collins said the list is "influenced by all parts of life including social media, slang, technology and food, plus English from around the world."

Helen Newstead, head of language content at Collins, said social media has changed the way the company chooses words.

"Dictionaries have always included formal and informal English, but it used to be hard to find printed evidence of the use of slang words," Newstead told the BBC. "Now people use slang in social media posts, tweets, blogs, comments, text messages -- you name it -- so there's a host of evidence for informal varieties of English that simply didn't exist before."

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