Twitter users vote popular blend word for gauche but endearing into print reference book
Adorkable star … Jarvis Cocker. Photograph: Karen Robinson
Following in the honourable footsteps of Samuel Johnson, Twitter users have voted the word "adorkable" into the next edition of the Collins English Dictionary.
A blend of "adorable" and "dork", meaning "socially inept or unfashionable in a charming or endearing way", adorkable's first use was traced by Collins to Twitter, in March 2007. The dictionary said its use went on to peak in January 2012, and that the word "has now settled into a steady and rising pattern of use, establishing adorkable as a popular word in general use which is here to stay".
The hunt for a new word saw Collins asking members of the public to submit their choices, with its lexicographers then analysing the contenders against the "Collins corpus", a database of more than 4.5bn words and definitions which is updated daily, and against Twitter, to determine their usage levels. The dictionary said that "using Twitter data alongside our corpus is a natural extension of our established process".
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A blend of "adorable" and "dork", meaning "socially inept or unfashionable in a charming or endearing way", adorkable's first use was traced by Collins to Twitter, in March 2007. The dictionary said its use went on to peak in January 2012, and that the word "has now settled into a steady and rising pattern of use, establishing adorkable as a popular word in general use which is here to stay".
The hunt for a new word saw Collins asking members of the public to submit their choices, with its lexicographers then analysing the contenders against the "Collins corpus", a database of more than 4.5bn words and definitions which is updated daily, and against Twitter, to determine their usage levels. The dictionary said that "using Twitter data alongside our corpus is a natural extension of our established process".
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