Remember all those times you went to look up the definition for “woot” and it wasn’t there? As of today, that is no longer the case!!! Woot has finally been defined, and it will be added to the latest edition of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary!
According to this 12th edition, “woot” means: “to express happiness and enthusiasm”…which is weird, because this whole time we thought it meant “one who wears stockings under jeans on a fort night from Friday”. Glad that’s been cleared up.
Other new words include:
fozzle: to make a mess of
retweet: (on the social networking service Twitter) repost or forward (a message posted by another user).
growlery: a place to growl in
cyberbullying: the use of electronic communication to bully a person
jeggings – tight-fitting stretch trousers for women, styled to look like a pair of denim jeans
mankini: (pl. mankinis) a brief one-piece bathing garment for men, with a T-back.
Isn’t it funny that “retweet” made the cut, but back in 1964 the word “Beatlemania” was rejected? Also, while “fozzle” has just been added, “foozle” has been in there for years. (For those who don’t know, “foozle” means to do clumsily, or bungle).
In honor of the dictionary updates, we’ve dug up some articles called “Word Up” from The Mag vault. Yeah, we were doing it BEFORE Urban Dictionary. Now, lets all reflect on how silly people in the late 90’s sounded…
Originally published in the Spring 1999 issue of The Magazine:
Originally published in the Fall 2000 issue of The Magazine: