Yeehaw! Scrabble Dictionary adds 500 words
Katherine Mansfield/Observer-Reporter
The “Official Scrabble Players Dictionary,” seventh edition, now includes Millennial and Gen Z terms like “bae” and “atted,” and vernacular words like “vax.” The addition of 500 words to the dictionary will allow players to open up the board and more easily get letters, particularly the letter “C,” by playing “guac,” off their dockets and onto the gameboard.
Katherine Mansfield/Observer-Reporter
Words like “inspo,” “atted” and “kabocha” are now Scrabble-official, allowing casual and competitive players alike to discard of hard-to-place letters and open up the board more easily. Hasbro and Merriam-Webster announced the expanded seventh edition of the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary last week.
The addition of 500 words to “The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary” seventh edition, released last week by Hasbro and Merriam-Webster, should make for some exciting and eyebrow-raising gameplay this holiday season.
The dictionary’s expansion – which includes “dox,” the search for and publication of identifying information, typically with malicious intent; and “dumpster,” a trademark turned generic – has sparked convos amongst Scrabble enthusiasts nationwide. (Convo, short for “conversation,” was accepted as a 10-point word in the U.K. before its recent addition to the U.S. dictionary.)
“As our lexicon grows … (words) get incorporated into gameplay. It makes playing a little bit easier because it expands the possibility of what you can do with the letters on your rack,” said Mike Tony, who founded the Uniontown Scrabble Club, which meets at Uniontown Public Library the third Monday of each month, as part of a high school senior project 14 years ago. “It opens up the game a little bit more. It makes it easier to put down certain letters that otherwise won’t be playable in certain situations.”
Letters like “C,” Tony said, which is deceptively difficult to discard of, and “Q,” now more easily played, thanks to the addition of the term “queso.”
“I did print out all the ones that have Q in them, without being ‘Qu.’ I didn’t know there were so many,” laughed Johanna Rubino, a Monongahela resident who works at Donora Library, where she is a member of the bi-weekly Scrabble Club. “We’re always looking for something when we get stuck with a Q.”
Rubino is excited the acceptable word list has been expanded so exponentially.
“I think it’s a good idea. Why have limitations?” said Rubino. “I think, for the group that I play with, the more words, the better. Any word that works is fine with me.”
The words that work are wide-ranging.
“Vax,” a remnant of the COVID-19 pandemic, is now an acceptable way to get rid of those pesky Xs, as is “fauxhawk,” a hairstyle similar to the mohawk.
“Yeehaw,” that antiquated Wild West word, has finally been inducted onto the Scrabble board, while new words like “subtweet,” “inspo” and “vibing” can also be found in the seventh edition of the “Official Scrabble Players Dictionary” (Millennials, do you feel seen?).
Gen Z will delight in playing words like “stan” and “bae,” and foodies, rejoice, because “horchata,” “guac,” and “marg,” short for “margarita,” are now on the scoreboard menu.
In this latest edition of the dictionary, “ixnay” has leveled up to verb status; now “ixnayed” and “ixnaying” are certain to score some serious points, and other verbs are also playable, including “adulting” and “atted” (the past tense of being addressed by someone on Twitter, according to Urban Dictionary).
“Everything else in this country is shifting, so why not words?” Rubino said.
While casual and at-home players can put those 500 new words to use over pie and coffee, tournament players are, for the moment, unaffected by the dictionary’s expansion.
“It seems like a simple game when you just play it at home. When you play in a tournament, it’s quite complicated, not only because of the huge number of words you need to know, but the rules are fairly complicated to prevent cheating,” said Bob Hagerty, of Mt. Lebanon, who oversees the Mt. Lebanon Public Library North American Scrabble Players Association Club No. 655.
“The typical Scrabble player … some of them will buy a new dictionary,” said Hagerty, or, “they’ll just use whatever dictionary is close at hand. If you’re playing at the tournament level, you better have the latest list from NASPA. That could mean the difference between winning and losing.”
On NASPA’s Facebook page last week, tournament players discussed Hasbro and Merriam-Webster’s dictionary changes. John Chew, chief executive officer of NASPA and the Facebook page’s administrator, wrote online that the 2023 NASPA Word List would include those words added to the “Official Scrabble Players Dictionary,” seventh edition.
Tournament Scrabble players pay closer attention to word additions and removals (within the last couple years, Scrabble dictionaries have done away with more than 200 derogatory words), but wordsmiths of all levels will certainly benefit from the dictionary’s expansion. The addition of words like “Hygge,” a Danish term for all things cozy, and “pageview,” one of several compound words that made this latest cut, illustrates the dictionary’s ability to keep up with our ever-evolving language.
“It’s always exciting, every four years, when new words come out, words that are starting to be used in the culture, and you can put them down on the board and get a lot of points,” said Tony.
Hagerty agreed that the dictionary updates keep Scrabble modern.
“For a Scrabble player, it’s good to have these updates, because the language changes,” said Hagerty. “You need to get rid of words that are no longer in dictionaries and adopt new words.”
Rubino said she hopes the addition of new words encourages a younger generation to gather, pull tiles and spell with friends.
“I think it’s a good learning tool. I wish more children would get into it. It would help with spelling, even reading,” she said.
Tony is optimistic that Scrabble will keep on keepin’ on. The word game has entertained for generations, since its invention by architect Alfred Butts in 1931.
“Everybody uses words. It’s a malleable game because however you want to play it, whether it’s ultra competitive in a tournament setting or just a relaxed, informal get-together, it’s … just a lot of fun,” said Tony. “There’s strategy involved, and a little luck. We all like to shape words. I think the popularity of Wordle has proven that Scrabble, I think, is always going to endure as a game that brings people together.”