Oxford English Dictionary says 'tweet' is now a real word

Twitter power users can now officially sport the ‘We told you so’ face. ‘Tweet’ has been accepted by the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) as both a verb and a noun. You would’ve thought that seven years after the birth of the world’s most popular micro-blogging service, ’tweet’ would officially be recognised by now. But it’s shown up finally in the June 2013 update to the OED.

Besides the original meaning of the word, the new definitons say to tweet is “to make a posting on the social networking service Twitter.” It could also mean “to use Twitter regularly or habitually.”

Tweet has a new meaning!

Calling it a “quiet announcement”, Chief Editor for OED, John Simpson inducted the word as both a verb and a noun. He mentions that the word being accepted by the dictionary is kind of special. Tweet’s induction breaks at least one OED rule since a new word needs to be current for ten years before being considered for inclusion in the dictionary. OED, however, has made a special case for tweet because “it seems to be catching on,” Simpson wrote.

More from News & Analysis

What is the US HIRE Bill and why is India’s $250-billion IT sector worried? Is the internet dead? What's this theory that OpenAI's Sam Altman says might be true?

It is rather surprising to note that the word ‘retweet’ was embraced by Oxford back in 2011! The OED didn’t comment on why it took longer for the root word ’tweet’ to make it to the dictionary,  but we are glad it has finally made it. The word ’tweet’ itself dates back to 1851, and did not originate as you may have imagined with Twitter. The previous definition stated a tweet is a “brief high-pitched sound or call, or a series of such sounds” of a bird, which also is the social network’s logo.