The 12th edition of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary has been hauled into the 20th century, with a number of first-time additions to the dictionary reflecting the rise and rise of online culture. New words include cyberbullying, denialist, jeggings, mankini, retweet, sexting and woot (informal [especially in electronic communication] used to express elation, enthusiasm, or triumph). Some older words have been given a makeover: a cougar now not only refers to a species of the feline family but also means “an older woman seeking a sexual relationship with a younger man”, according to CNN.
Meanwhile across the Channel French broadcasting regulators, the Conseil supérieur de l’audiovisuel (CSA), have decreed that television and radio broadcasters will no longer be permitted to use the words ‘Facebook’ and ‘Twitter’ as generic terms for social media. The rationale of the ban is that these words refer to specific corporate brand names and not to the generic medium, and that their use is thus anti-competitive. A CSA spokesman is quoted as explaining, “Why give preference to Facebook, which is worth billions of dollars, when there are many other social networks that are struggling for recognition. This would be a distortion of competition.”