new words recognized by the OED

HERE.

They include (I’m not kidding):

*FYI

*LOL

*OMG

*and “heart” as a verb, as in “I ♥ wordpress.com”

Obviously, FYI has been around a lot longer than the others. I guess the tsunami of new abbreviations retroactively convinced them that FYI merited admission after so many years of exclusion.

These OED decisions obviously do have some influence. I always feel more comfortable using deviant slang once the OED opens the door to it, so that any pedant who scolds me can now get hammered with the OED counterpunch. Most recently, the newly permitted use of “they” as a third person singular pronoun is an example of this. I still wouldn’t do it in formal writing, but it’s handy to be able to say things like: “Every philosopher tells us at some point what they think about ethics.” This is a good way of simultaneously avoiding the sexist “he,” the trying-too-hard “she,” and the unwieldy “he/she.” Unfortunately, it still doesn’t quite pass muster in formal writing. But a pedant once scolded me for doing it in an email, and the OED counterpunch came fast and heavy.