Twerking, the term most recently used to describe Miley
Cyrus' lewd bump and grind move at the MTV awards, has made it into the
Oxford dictionary.
For the unenlightened, it is defined as "The twerk, v.: dance to
popular music in a sexually provocative manner involving thrusting hip
movements and a low, squatting stance."It is among a number of new words that have been included in the latest revision of Oxford Dictionaries online.
Other terms include "selfie" for a camera-phone self-portrait, "digital detox" for time spent offline and "click and collect", the shopping phrase.
Katherine Connor Martin, from Oxford Dictionaries Online, said "twerk" was around 20 years old and seemed to have been coined as part of the "bounce" hip-hop scene in the United States.
"By last year, it had generated enough currency to be added to our new words watch list, and by this spring, we had enough evidence of usage frequency in a breadth of sources to consider adding it to our dictionaries of current English," she said.
She added that the "likely theory is that it is an alteration of work, because that word has a history of being used in similar ways, with dancers being encouraged to 'work it'. The 't' could be a result of blending with another word such as twist or twitch."
Twenty-year-old Cyrus, who first rose to fame as the lead in Disney children's show Hannah Montana, made headlines with the risque performance with Robin Thicke in a nude PVC bikini at the awards in New York this week.
The show saw her perform a medley of her party song We Can't Stop and Thicke's summer hit Blurred Lines while twerking furiously with the singer-songwriter.
The quarterly update for the site also includes words from the world of food and drink including "street food", "pear cider" and "food baby" – a swollen gut.
Words derived from the fashion industry include "double denim" and "geek chic".
Comments
Post a Comment