Sexting, Sammich and Fnarr fnarr are now official words!

I often make fun of these words, and even make videos about them (8.9 million views and counting, btw!), and now a whole slew of these words are now official!  The Oxford Dictionaries Online (sister to my favorite source, the Oxford English Dictionary) has officially recognized such words as:

Sexting

Scareware

Clickjacking

Woot

Sammich

Prolly

Who’da

Fnarr fnarr

You can see the list of new words here with some additional ones here.

What’s Fnarr fnarr you ask?  Well, the official definition is:

Pronunciation:/fnɑː ˈfnɑː/  (also  fnar fnar) exclamation British informal
  • used to represent sniggering, typically at a sexual innuendo:  That’s some package! (Said the bishop to the actress, fnarr fnarr)

And what’s sniggering you ask?  Well, that comes from “snigger” which is  “a smothered or half-suppressed laugh.”

Boy, this stuff seems complicated!  Someone should do a show about words like these!

Bye bye my dear students, MWAH!  <– another of the now official words!

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  • http://www.facebook.com/musicselector Yan Lipavsky

    Thank you miss Orlova :)

  • http://twitter.com/curledmoss Ann

    Hard working Saturday…check is in the mail-box…JOKE

  • leoNard

    OX-ford…I make fun of the people using those words…all for the cyber space and threats too…

    the Union strikes the poor to beg!..Ha-Ha

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaGF6WPuSpM&feature=related“>happy good day too!….good job Miss Hotforwords!

  • wetsuit5

    Okey Doke Teach,
    Got the new spelling.
    MWAH!!

  • BigBhd95

    so much to learn so little time

  • neuroway

    Yess, this stuff seems extremely complicated indeed! I believe someone should do a show about this, but ONLY an official show officially endorsed by an official party member of the official powers that be.

    We don’t want to see anything unofficial or unvernacular here of course! Let us not forget that beyond the borders of the official, the savage, barbarous and brutal realm of the unofficial begins! MMMUUUUWWWHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAH!!!!! Erm.. Sorry… Fnar fnarrian slip here. It won’t happen again.. I wanted to say… Achtung, dear fellow students! Keep it official! In doubt, escalate the issue to your nearest official state office of unvernacular mind sanity evaluation. All right?

  • Camp Kohler – Sacramento CA

    This new list of wordery has been furnished by M, just in time to ameliorate the present Great Word Depression, where writer’s dignity is lost by standing in the lines of soup kitchens which hand out empty-calory prose. The list makes it perfectly clear the populace’s finding of a shortage of the English language in some particular or another. I, myself, find myself, I, almost apoplectic over the fact that there was, until just now, no way to express the concept of fnarrness (or is it fnarrsity?). And what can one say about sammich?

    I am stunned by it all. About half of the entries should be ignored even if they now are exalted by virtue of their entry into the great book. Just because monkeys sling their shit at passing visitors is no reason why we should. I mean, we have evolved, haven’t we?

  • Camp Kohler – Sacramento CA

    The fact that, in the end, you forget everything you ever learned means that you might as well enjoy the luxury of being a bit more selective as to what crap you shovel into your head.

    I’m just sayin’…

  • neuroway

    Selective as to what crap you shovel into your head, eh? Officially, you should shovel only the crap you are influenced to shovel in there. Are you an unvernacular rebellious mind, CK?

    Unofficially, though… You can do whatever you want there, inside your head, because nobody can control it. You can premedite any crazy shit you want there, because your head is as free as hell, even if you don’t now it (because nobody told you this before). And that’s what scares the shit out of the official authorities, because their own interest is to exclusively shovel their official crap into your head, of course.

    You could even choose to shovel gold, diamonds or pearls into your head. But it’s a secret! Don’t tell anyone about this all right? Your head should be full of the official propaganda! And nothing else!!!

  • http://www.youtube.com/user/capman911?feature=mhum Capman911

    I didn’t check the rest of the words but what about “I’ma” from Kenya somebody. lol

  • http://www.youtube.com/user/capman911?feature=mhum Capman911

    I just watched your next Sexting video. I can’t understand why so many thumbs down on that video. Sorry Marina like most of the rest I couldn’t help myself I pressed 4 while the video played and was surprised by what happens when different number keys are pressed when the video is playing. You are dearly loved by all here. ;=) <3

  • Dezdkado

    Dear Teacher,

    The links you provided did not discuss any reason why these words were “officially” added. Were these words added due to their pervasive use, or some other reason? Why do you think they were added? Do they add these to mark the changes in our language over time; to keep a reckoning of not just learned language, but also the word usage of the common man? Also, when I looked at the definitions of some of these words, I noted that they were listed as “informal”. Does this notation refer to slang? If not, what is the difference between “informal” and “slang”? While some words are onomatopoeia, and others technical or medium-related, there are some “official” words that I question. “Prolly” and “sammich”, much like “aksing”, “idear”, and a Bostonian’s “cah” (for “car”) are not new words, but shortened forms, alternate pronunciations, and vernacular for already existing words. These newly and “officially” added words are not new. I’ve used them, or heard them used by others, for the better part of half a century. What has changed in these past few years that has caused them to be documented now?

  • neuroway

    I wonder why “duckspeak”, which was coined back in 1948, has not made it into that “dictionary”.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_IROEESZ3YKZU7PH2YHNUKPXFGQ Samuel

    “Woman, make me a sammich,” said Cotton once on ‘King of the Hill’. (I always thought that was funny.) MWAH < Always knew that was a word. (And a HOT word, at that.)

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_IROEESZ3YKZU7PH2YHNUKPXFGQ Samuel

    So, right, we are all dumbfounded that these ‘sounds’ are now considered words. But it is all about communication and expression of ideas. Informal or slang doesn’t mean it ‘ain’t’ so. If there is a definition that is understood by two or more people, then a word is a word is a word (in any language). Let’s not be snobs about it. Words are fun, right? But what, you may ask, is the OED thinking? I have no idea. They SHOULD be the purists, shouldn’t they.

  • bobsully

    I had to look up most of them to understand their use and meaning. I guess our grunts are always evolving…

  • Dezdkado

    I am not against the use of these words. I use jargon, colloquialisms, and slang words constantly. The “official” acceptance of onomatopoeia (fnarr fnarr), exclamations (woot) and techie-terms {<– See… an unofficial, unsanctioned word o'slang} or jargon like "bandwidth" make sense. What I wonder is… why are alternate spellings and pronunciations, for already existing words, being treated as new words? I find it funny and ironic that these terms, that have now become official, have official pronunciations. That is, now there is a right and a wrong way to say "sammich"… a word they recognize as an alternate pronunciation for "sandwich." I further find it amusing that because I question this flaw in logic I am labeled a "snob".

  • Dezdkado

    You are quite the gadfly, neuroway

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_IROEESZ3YKZU7PH2YHNUKPXFGQ Samuel

    Who labeled you a snob? Touchy, touchy. And, indeed, amusing.

  • Evan Owen

    1984 has come and gone. :razz:

  • Evan Owen

    {premedite}

  • Evan Owen

    I’ve learned some of these (woot, nom nom) from my teenage daughter. Another favorite of hers is “facepalm,” a reaction to someone’s technological naivete (e.g. “How do I get YouTube to make a video for me?”) “Pwned,” despite its spelling, is not Welsh, but a contraction of “perfectly owned,” i.e. totally defeated.

  • Evan Owen

    What young people are watching these days:

    She’s also a fan of the asdf movies for those of minimal attention span:


    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKB4h9gvmm0

  • Dezdkado

    Take it easy, Samuel. I said I was amused, not offended. Also, I apologize. In re-reading your comment, I see my error . You make a call to not be snobs, not an indictment of those who question the validity of these new “official” words.

  • Dezdkado

    well, I learned something new… I thought it was a contraction for “Player Owned”… especially in a PVP (player vs player) environment

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_IROEESZ3YKZU7PH2YHNUKPXFGQ Samuel

    It’s cool. We are all here as friends and fellow students, right. We all have opinions and we are just handing in our ‘homework’. And we all love Marina Orlova!

  • Dezdkado

    Evan, did you mean {premeditate} ? Oh crap! I sound like Google, now… It really is slowly taking over the world.

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  • Anonymous

    This is Modern word for the Official Condition.This Word is basically use in the Daily Official Meeting.
    http://lexposure.net/swigiounem-ben

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