Before you roll your eyes at the Gen Alpha in your life for using made-up words, you might want to check the latest update to the dictionary. Cambridge University announced that its most recent revisions to the Cambridge Dictionary add 6,000 new words, including a slew of internet-pilled ones like skibidi, tradwife, and delulu.
“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. 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.
Note that the measurement here is staying power, not whether we want it to stick around. To McIntosh’s point, “skibidi”—defined as “a word that can have different meanings such as ‘cool’ or ‘bad,’ or can be used with no real meaning as a joke”—has already been around for nearly a decade, with its first usage tracked to a 2018 song released by Little Big. The song, titled “Skibidi,” has over 700 million views on YouTube. Of course, the term came to prominence in 2023 thanks to a deeply brain-rotted YouTube series and became so popular that Kim Kardashian wore the word on a necklace for no apparent reason.
Another entry, ‘tradwife,’ is fascinating to consider in terms of staying power, as it references an older model of familial structure. It’s literally short for “traditional wife,” suggesting that the users recognize that the term “wife” has moved away from their preferred definition. Interestingly, Cambridge identifies tradwife as a uniquely online identity, defining it as “a married woman, especially one who posts on social media, who stays at home doing cooking, cleaning, etc. and has children that she takes care of.”
A link to the internet or technology is a central aspect of many of Cambridge’s new terms. Others that made the cut include “mouse jiggler,” referring to software that keeps your screen active so it looks like you’re working, and “broligarchy,” defined as “a small group of men, especially men owning or involved in a technology business, who are extremely rich and powerful, and who have or want political influence.” We’ll give you three guesses as to whom that term applies.
One term that is not particularly modern but has just made the cut: “work spouse.” Which is defined as “a person with whom someone has a close, but not romantic, relationship at work, in which the two people help and trust each other in the same way that a married couple does.” That one almost feels like a word from another era, making it a fascinating inclusion in a tech-heavy batch.
If seeing some of those terms make it into the dictionary gets you riled up, you should know that Cambridge is constantly adding new words. You don’t have to use them, but it’s nice to be able to look them up when others do.