Puzzle game at a store in Palo Alto, Calif., 2009.
Paul Sakuma/AP
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Paul Sakuma/AP
Puzzle game at a store in Palo Alto, Calif., 2009.
Paul Sakuma/AP
NEW YORK – This is sitch, Scrabble stans. Your groups around the board are about to get even more fun with about 500 new words and variations added to the game’s official dictionary: stan, sitch, convo, zedonk, dox, and fauxhawk among them.
This month, add-ons in the seventh edition of the “Official Scrabble Players Dictionary” incorporate more than 100,000 two- to eight-letter words. The book was last updated in 2018 through a longstanding partnership between Hasbro and Merriam-Webster.
New words include a number of trademarks that have become generic – garbage for a word – some acronyms are fun like guac, and an interesting presentation of more verb variations: torrented, torrenting , adulted, adulting, atted, atting (as in don’t at me, bro) .
“We also turn words into verbs so you can play verbs and verbs,” says Peter Sokolowski, editor-in-chief of Merriam-Webster, with a smile on his lips and the twinkle in his eyes. nerd in an exclusive interview with the Associated Press.
The Fauxhawk, a hairstyle similar to the Mohawk, is likely to be the highest-scoring newcomer, he said. Embiggen, a verb meaning to increase in size, is one of the surprises. (Sample sentence: “I really need to rewrite that Scrabble dictionary.”)
Compound words are on the rise in the book with deadname, pageview, fintech, allyship, babymoon and subtweet. The same goes for “nos”, such as unfollow, unsubscribe, and unmute. They sound familiar, but they’ve never been an official game of Scrabble, at least when it comes to this divine game’s trademark dictionary.
Tournament play is an entirely different matter, with a broader range of words already agreed upon.
Sokolowski and a team of editors at Merriam-Webster tapped the frequently refreshed online database at Merriam-Webster.com to expand the book Scrabble. While the official game rules always allow the use of whatever dictionary the player allows, many people look to the official version when sitting down to find a Scrabble slot. Some luxury Scrabble sets include one of the books.
Over the past year or two, the Scrabble dictionary has had more than 200 racist, ethnic and other derogatory words removed – even though they are present in some dictionaries. That prompted fierce debate among tournament players. Proponents of the cleanup call it long overdue. Others argue that the words, however hideous by definition, are still playable as long as there are points.
While the house rules never specifically ban offensive words, you won’t find the 200 infamous words in the Scrabble dictionary, with rare exceptions for words with other meanings.
The new Scrabble book includes at least one old-fashioned word that has simply been on the radar for years: yeehaw.
“Yeehaw is like a lot of old, informal terms. They’re more spoken than written and the gold standard for editing dictionaries has always been written proof. So a term like yeehaw, that’s all. we all know from childhood and in movies and TV, is something you’ve heard. You don’t read it often,” Sokolowski said.
Yeehaw, meet bae, inspo, vibed and vibing, all new additions to the Scrabble dictionary. Ixnay, already in the books, has been promoted to verb, so ixnayed, ixnaying and ixnays are now allowed.
Welp, thingie, roid, skeezy, slushee and hygge (Danish obsession with being cozy) also made the list. Kharif, the autumn harvest of the Indian subcontinent too.
Blacksmiths from Merriam-Webster added a bunch of food-related words: iftar, horchata, kabocha, mofongo, zuke, zoodle, wagyu, queso and marg, for margarita, among them. Many Scrabble players don’t care about definitions – just scores – but in terms of information:
Iftar is a meal eaten by Muslims at sunset to break the daily fast during the month of Ramadan. Mofongo is a traditional Puerto Rican dish made of fried or boiled bananas. Horchata is a sweet drink and kabocha is a winter squash.
Zonkey joins zedonk among new words that use the letter Z, one of the highest scoring words in Scrabble along with Q (10 points each). You ask the difference between those two wacky-sounding animals? A zonkey was bred from a male zebra and a female donkey. The lineage of a zedonk is the opposite. Zedonk even has a playable variant: zeedonk.
Zoomer, for a member of GenZ, is also a new product. Familiar with the Middle Eastern spice mix za’atar? A less common variant, zaatar, is now in the Scrabble dictionary. Words with single quotes are not allowed.
And there’s so much more where all of that comes from:
Oppo, jedi, adorbs, doxx variants doxxed, eggcorn (a confusion of ears), fintech, folx (including alternative for folks), grawlix, hangry, matcha, onesie, spork, swole, unmalted, vaquita, vax and vaxxed is extra.
Yes, jedi doesn’t need to be capitalized. Wondering what grawlix means? Here it is: $%!*#, a series of typed symbols used to replace words a person doesn’t want to write, often words that got you into trouble as a child.
Among other new eight-letter words, the one that helps players clear their seven-cell holders for an extra 50 points: hogsbane, commonly known as the giant hogweed. Other: pranayam, a breathing technique in yoga.
Sokolowski won’t reveal all 500 new words, challenging players to find them on their own. Are your Scrabble senses disturbed?
“All of these words have been tested, defined and added to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, and we have now determined that they are playable in Scrabble,” Sokolowski said. “You’ve got some interesting new words.”
So which new entry is the subject’s favorite? That’s what sounds like an acorn pronunciation.
“I like custards,” Sokolowski said, “because it’s a word about words.”
