Social media, tweet, crowdsourcing now in Merriam-Webster's 2011 edition

One week after tech and social media-related terms retweet, sexting, cyberbullying, and woot made it to the Oxford English Dictionary’s 100th edition, another batch of such terms have been included in this year’s update of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. Merriam-Webster said the inclusion of words like social media, tweet and crowdsourcing is “yet another sign of our era's communications revolution." "From the dramatic events of the Arab Spring to the scandal that brought down Congressman Anthony Weiner, tweet is a word that has been part of the story. We've been tracking words like social media and tweet for years, of course, and now we feel their meanings have stabilized enough to include them in the dictionary," said Peter Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster's Editor at Large. According to Merriam-Webster's social media and tweet are just two of over 150 new words and definitions that have been added to this year’s edition of its dictionary. It noted tweet and social media join other technology-related terms including crowdsourcing and m-commerce ("a business transaction conducted using a mobile electronic device"). Crowdsourcing is defined in the dictionary as “the practice of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people and especially from the online community rather than from traditional employees or suppliers," with its first known use in 2006. Social media is defined in this year’s edition of the dictionary as “forms of electronic communication (as Web sites for social networking and microblogging) through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content (as videos)," with its first known use noted in 2004. A tweet is defined as either “a chirping note," or a “post made on the Twitter online message service," with the first known use in 1768. Other new terms included in this year’s edition border on pop culture such as bromance (a close nonsexual friendship between men, first known use in 2004) and cougar (a middle-aged woman seeking a romantic relationship with a younger man). Sports terms include come duathlon ("a three-part long-distance race with a running phase, a bicycling phase, and a final running phase"), walk-off ("ending a baseball game immediately by causing the winning run to score for the home team in the bottom of the last inning"), and the new sport parkour, which involves rapid and efficient running, climbing, or leaping over environmental obstacles. "Many people saw parkour in the James Bond film Casino Royale, but they may not have known that this daring sport had a name," said Sokolowski. Still other new terms include helicopter parent ("a parent who is overly involved in the life of his or her child") and boomerang child ("a young adult who returns to live at his or her family home especially for financial reasons"). — LBG, GMA News