Gen Z and Gen Alpha slang terms “skibidi,” “tradwife” and “delulu” are among the 6,000 new words that have been added to the world’s largest online dictionary, Cambridge Dictionary.
Skibidi, a nonsense word featured in a viral animated YouTube series, can mean “cool” or “bad” or be used with no real meaning as a joke.
Other additions include “tradwife,” a portmanteau of “traditional wife,” referring to a married mom who shares content of her cooking and cleaning on social media, and “delulu,” a shortening of “delusional.”
“Internet culture is changing the English language and the effect is fascinating to observe and capture in the dictionary,” Colin McIntosh, lexical program manager at Cambridge Dictionary, said in a statement.
“It’s not every day you get to see words like ‘skibidi’ and ‘delulu’ make their way into the Cambridge Dictionary. We only add words where we think they’ll have staying power,” he said.
The news of some of the nearly 6,000 new additions to the dictionary this year sparked bewilderment from many.
“Congratulations English is no longer a language, it’s a TikTok comment section,” one grumpy X user wrote.
“I’m usually fine with language evolving and changing and the dictionary keeping up but do not add the gibberish word Skibidi to the dictionary,” a second added.
“This is the reason why most of humanity is delulu,” a third joked.Skibidi was branded as an example of “brainrot” by writer and artist Lee Escobedo earlier this month.
“Skibidi brainrot encapsulates a generation fluent in irony but starved for meaning. This kind of hyper-chaotic media serves as both entertainment and an ambient worldview for young men raised online. Their minds normalize prank-as-expression,” he wrote in the Guardian.
A number of work-related terms have been added to the dictionary with the rise of post-pandemic remote working.
These include “mouse jiggler,” a piece of software or device used to make it seem like you are working.
Other terms include “work wife” and “work spouse.”
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