Twerking is allowed! 300 new words enter Scrabble dictionary

Merriam-Webster released the sixth edition of The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary, four years after the last freshening up.

Lexicographer Peter Sokolowski, the editor at Merriam-Webster, says that some of the additions will be greatly welcomed by Scrabble players, with '˜OK' and '˜ew' now in the game, as well as '˜qapik' '“ a unit of currency in Azerbaijan.

He said: '˜OK is something Scrabble players have been waiting for, for a long time '“ two and three-letter words are the lifeblood of the game.

'˜Every time there's a word with q and no u, it's a big deal.

'˜Most of these are obscure.'

Merriam-Webster put out the first official Scrabble dictionary in 1976 '“ before that, the game's rules called for any desk dictionary to be consulted.

Since an official dictionary was created, it has been updated every four to eight years.

Mr Sokolowski said: '˜I think ew is interesting because it expresses something new about what we're seeing in language, which is to say that we are now incorporating more of what you might call transcribed speech.

'˜Traditionally, they were not in the dictionary but because so much of our communication is texting and social media that is written language, we are finding more transcribed speech and getting a new group of spellings for the dictionary.'

Other new acceptable words are aquafaba, beatdown, zomboid, wayback, bokeh, botnet, facepalm, frowny, hivemind, puggle and nubber.