Dad Joke, Tallboy, and 531 More Words Are Now in Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary

Earlier this week, Merriam-Webster announced that it had updated its online dictionary to recognize they as a singular nonbinary pronoun. While that may have been the most buzzworthy term on the list, it wasn’t the only one—Merriam-Webster also added 532 other words and definitions from the worlds of sports, business, psychology, pop culture, and more.

Certified pun masters, lovers of all things corny, and actual dads can rejoice: Dad joke is among the hundreds of new terms. Though it might seem like people have been tossing the term around for some years now, there was more to the addition process than just proving that dad joke is common. Merriam-Webster editor Peter Sokolowski explained to The Mercury News that editors sift through print and online publications to find evidence of a term’s widespread popularity and staying power. Once the editors could confirm that dad joke was all over the place and wasn’t just being used to describe “a joke told by a dad,” it was time to give it a formal definition: “a wholesome joke of the type said to be told by fathers with a punchline that is often an obvious or predictable pun or play on words and usually judged to be endearingly corny or unfunny.”

Also added were free solo, describing a rock climb undertaken without any rope or safety equipment, stinger—those short movie scenes during or after the credits—and coulrophobia, an “abnormal fear of clowns,” though anybody who’s ever seen a clown might argue that clown fear is completely normal.

Sokolowski’s favorite new word is non-rhotic, which describes the Bostonian habit of not pronouncing the letter r unless it’s followed by a vowel. “It expresses how the dictionary works,” he told The Mercury News. “The term has been around for 50 years but it’s been mostly used by scholars and linguists. But because of social media, the curtain is being pulled back and it’s being used more by the general public. As a language guy, I think that’s just fantastic!”

Merriam-Webster has also added a number of new abbreviations and “senses,” or definitions, to existing dictionary entries. Likely brought about by their ubiquitous presence among Instagram hashtags, inspo and vacay are now officially acceptable abbreviations for inspiration and vacation, respectively. And financiers will be happy to hear that haircut now has a new sense meaning “a reduction in the value of an asset” (even though a good haircut can really make you feel like a million bucks). Tallboy or tall boy has also now been accepted to mean “a tall cylindrical can for beverages (such as beer) usually measuring 16 fluid ounces.”

Industry jargon, social media, and pop culture are all common sources of lexical innovation, and authors have contributed quite a few new terms over the years, too. Try your hand at matching words to their authors-slash-inventors in this quiz.