‘Throwing shade’ added to the Oxford dictionary

A number of modern slang terms have been added to the Oxford online dictionary, including “side-eye”, “hot mess” and “cray”.

The phrases have been included as part of the dictionary’s quarterly update, which reflects the impact of pop culture on English vocabulary.

Brought to mainstream attention in RuPaul’s Drag Race, the term “throw shade” is now recognised, along with “subtweet”, “humblebrag” and “amazeballs” – though the words won’t yet appear in the dictionary’s printed form.

Other notable additions include “hate-watch”, “adorbs”, “douchbaggery” and to “catfish” someone, meaning to “lure someone into a relationship by adopting a fictional online persona”.

You can also now officially describe the men featured in attitude.co.uk‘s Boys section as “hench”, as the word has also been included in the Oxforddictionaries.com update.

Oxford Dictionaries editor Katherine Connor Martin said in a statement:

“One of the advantages of our unique language monitoring programme is that it enables us to explore how English language evolves differently across the world.

“Naturally, many words are used in similar frequencies in the UK and US, for instance the informal additions amazeballs and neckbeard.

“However, some new slang and informal words catch on much more quickly in a particular variety of English-for instance, in our monitoring sample, side boob is more than 10 times more common in the UK than in the US (although this is due in part to its frequent use in the British media), whereas adorbs is used about four times more often in the US as in the UK.”

Have a look at some recent examples of “shade-throwing” below.

> ‘Vogue’ producer throws shade at Madonna, Miley duet
> Anderson Cooper throws shade at anti-gay news anchor
> Lady Gaga throws shade at Katy Perry over tour copying?