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‘Dubstep’ and ‘Auto-Tune’ Are in the Dictionary Now

Dubstep Dictionary Auto-tune Crowdfunding

Once a year, the folks at Merriam-Webster announce a series of buzzworthy words to add to the next year’s installment of their collegiate dictionary. As Time reports, today is the appointed day and there’s a whole new host of words that’ll no doubt frustrate and annoy the more pretentious logophiles. Chief among those is the addition of “dubstep.”

Hot on the heels of an SNL‘s sketch that warned of the dangers of the drop, Merriam-Webster offers this brief explanation of the genre:

“dubstep (n., 2002): a type of electronic dance music having prominent bass lines and syncopated drum patterns”

They must have forgotten the bit about the lights and the drugs and the funny asymmetrical haircuts. In any case, “auto-tune” (or “Auto-Tune”), “crowdfunding,” and “fangirl” also all made it in this year, which is good news for T-Pain and bands who fund their records with Kickstarter campaigns, but bad news for anyone who would prefer that the accepted pejorative term for overzealous fans remain non-gendered.

The implications of this series of additions are minimal obviously, unless you play Scrabble using a Merriam-Webster dictionary, in which case “dubstep” can now earn you some serious points.