So I'm scrolling TikTok at 2am (normal behavior) and I see people arguing about whether "rizz" is a real word.
Turns out the dictionary already decided.
Oxford basically shrugged and said "fine." The internet lost its collective mind and honestly?
The word "dictionary" used to mean one thing: a thick dusty brick your teacher made you flip through while pretending that was faster than your phone.
These days the dictionary is basically a content creator, dropping new slang every few months like a rapper teasing an album. "Rizz." "Delulu." "Skibidi." "Bed rotting." "Tradwife." It's giving chaotic but make it academic.
Merriam-Webster editors literally track how often a word shows up, where it's being used, and whether it's sticking around.
If a word survives the vibe check across months and platforms, it gets a spot.
Some folks scream that slang is "ruining the language." Babes, the language has always been doing this.
Shakespeare invented words constantly and people at the time probably called him cringe. "Eyeball"?
The dictionary isn't a museum, it's a group chat that keeps adding members.
What's actually wild is how fast the pipeline moves now.
A word can go from a random streamer's mouth to a dictionary entry in like eighteen months.
Now a single viral moment can push a word into the official record while the meme is still funny.
That's unprecedented and kinda terrifying if you think about it for more than five seconds, which I don't recommend.
Nobody's out here saying "on fleek" with a straight face anymore.
The dictionary keeps the receipts, sure, but the culture moves on.
So every entry is basically a little time capsule of whatever the internet was obsessed with that year.
Future historians are gonna read "gyat" in an official archive and just stare at the wall.
The dictionary getting slangy isn't a downgrade, it's a survival move.
A language that refuses new words is a language nobody speaks.
So go ahead, submit your weird little phrases.
Worst case, the editors laugh and ignore you.
Final Thoughts
Best case, you end up immortalized next to "cromulent." Either way, keep talking weird.