Merriam-Webster dropped its latest batch of new dictionary entries this month, and if you thought the English language was already circling the drain, buddy, grab a snorkel.
We're talking hundreds of fresh words, phrases, and slang terms that officially made the cut, which means somewhere a lexicographer read "rizz" out loud in a meeting and nobody stopped them.
For the uninitiated, dictionary updates are basically the internet's report card.
When a word graduates from "thing your nephew says" to "thing printed in a reference book," that's society quietly admitting defeat.
This year's class includes terms pulled straight from group chats, sports talk, and whatever is happening on TikTok at 2 a.m.
It's short for charisma, it's been slang for a couple of years now, and it just got a formal definition.
Nothing says "the culture is thriving" like the same institution that defines "photosynthesis" also having to explain why your coworker claims he has "unspoken rizz." Reddit, predictably, had thoughts.
One top comment essentially said: the dictionary is just a Wikipedia page with tenure now.
Then there's the sports corner, where "gassed" earned an entry.
If you've ever watched your team blow a two-goal lead in the final ten minutes, you already know the word.
Now it's official, so you can use it in a formal email and technically be correct.
HR will still have questions, but technically correct.
The additions aren't all brain rot, to be fair.
A few genuinely useful terms snuck in, the kind that describe modern life with uncomfortable accuracy.
There's vocabulary for doomscrolling-adjacent behavior, for the specific exhaustion of pretending to be busy, for the art of leaving a party without saying goodbye.
That last one has needed a name for like forty years.
Here's the part that gets people riled up every single cycle: the "why is this in the dictionary" argument.
It resurfaces like clockwork, and it always misunderstands the assignment.
Dictionaries don't decide what's correct.
If millions of humans start using a word, the word exists.
Which is why the outrage cycle is so funny.
People act like Merriam-Webster is personally endorsing "skibidi" as high literature when really it's just doing the linguistic equivalent of a census.
The dictionary isn't your English teacher.
It's a mirror, and the reflection currently includes a lot of people yelling abbreviations at their phones.
Once a word is in the dictionary, you can use it in Scrabble without your cousin flipping the board.
You can put it in a work presentation and cite a source.
You can settle arguments at Thanksgiving with a hyperlink instead of a fistfight.
The practical downside is that next year's update will almost certainly include something worse.
That's not a prediction, that's a pattern.
Every cycle, the bar drops a little lower, and every cycle, we collectively shrug and add it to the pile.
Somewhere, a 19th-century lexicographer is spinning in his grave fast enough to power a small town.
Language has always been a messy, living thing, and the people who get mad about it are the same ones who still capitalize "Internet." The dictionary didn't ruin anything.
It just wrote down what we already did. **The Take:** Getting mad at a dictionary for adding slang is like getting mad at a mirror for showing you bedhead.
The words were already out there, you just didn't want them on paper.
Final Thoughts
Besides, if "rizz" is officially real, then so is the fact that you've been using it wrong this whole time.