Congrats are in order for Drake (and Ross) as “YOLO” has been added to the Oxford online dictionary!
We’re not sure if Drake ever trademarked the acronym or is receiving any royalist from “YOLO” after it exploded onto the scene from “The Motto,” but “you only live once” will forever be immortalized in pop culture and in our English language.
In 2012, “YOLO” was among the runners-up for Oxford Dictionaries’ U.S. word of the year, but ultimately lost out to “GIF.”
Here’s how Oxford explained the way it recognizes new words:
Our most important resources are the Oxford English Corpus and the Oxford Reading Programme. The Corpus consists of entire documents sourced largely from the World Wide Web, while the Reading Programme is an electronic collection of sentences or short extracts drawn from a huge variety of writing, from song lyrics and popular fiction to scientific journals. It’s based on the contributions of an international network of readers who are on the lookout for instances of new words and meanings or other language changes.
We can also thank Kanye West and Jay-Z, who were also recognized by Oxford, for their contribution to the English with the word “cray.”
The other words added this August to the online dictionary: “SMH,” “neckbeard,” “binge-watch,” “hate-watch,” “side-boob,” “adorbs,” “listicle,” “mansplain,” “hot mess,” spit-take, “hench,” “bro hug,” “side-eye,” and “acquihire.”
