17 Terms in the Oxford English Dictionary’s Spring 2023 Update

Earlier this year, porch pirate, sh**housery, and a bunch of other terms entered the hallowed (digital) pages of the Oxford English Dictionary. Its newest crop of inductees is just as colorful.

Your familiarity with some of the words might depend on where you live. Antigodlin—which describes something diagonal, slanted, or askew—is most often used in the American South, West, and South Midland. In Scotland, a mischievous kid might be called a “skelpie” (though you’re more likely to encounter the term in a historical novel than any modern-day context).

Both of those terms have been around for more than a century. Deepfake, on the other hand, was coined as recently as 2018. The fact that it’s already common and widespread enough to have earned a place in the OED is “a sign of how quickly a particular technology and the words associated with it can develop and spread,” Craig Leyland, the OED’s executive editor of new words, said in a blog post. And while deepfake can technically describe any piece of media in which someone’s appearance has been digitally altered so they look like someone else, the OED specifies that the tech is “often used maliciously to show someone doing something that he or she did not do.”

This latest update features names for things you might not have even known had names—like antigram, defined as “an anagram that has an opposite or contradictory meaning to the original word or phrase.” (E.g. Real fun is an antigram of funeral.) It also covers a few derogatory slang terms that belong in the ‘insensitive language you should avoid’ bucket, including lamester and crazy-pants.

Explore some of the new additions below, and find out more about the update here.

Term	Meaning
Anti-establishmentarianism	“Opposition or hostility to the establishment or established authority”
Antigodlin	“Diagonally, on a slant; not at right angles to established lines”
Antigram	“An anagram that has an opposite or contradictory meaning to the original word or phrase”
Cheddar	“Money”
Crazy-pants	“A person completely lacking in common sense, reason, or intelligence; a highly eccentric person”
Deepfake	“Any of various media ... digitally manipulated to replace one person’s likeness convincingly with that of another, often used maliciously to show someone doing something that he or she did not do”
Demimonde	“Any group that is regarded as disreputable or as being on the fringes of mainstream or conventional society or culture”
Dish dog	“A person employed to wash dishes and carry out other menial tasks in a kitchen; a kitchen porter”
Easy rider	“A person, typically a motorcyclist, viewed as representing freedom from responsibility, an alternative subculture, and an adventurous lifestyle”
Freako	“A highly unconventional or bohemian person ... a person regarded as strange, sinister, or perverted”
Gimp	“A person who takes a submissive or subservient role in bondage, domination, sadomasochism or similar sexual activities, typically while wearing a mask or bodysuit”
Groomzilla	“A man thought to have become intolerably obsessive or overbearing in planning the details of his wedding”
Lamester	“A dull, unimpressive, or contemptible person; a person regarded as social inept or out of touch”
Pop idol	“A highly successful pop star with a particularly devoted fan base”
Skelpie	“An insolent or mischievous child, esp. a girl ... a person regarded or treated as being of little worth”
Slur	“A term of abuse or contempt; esp. a highly offensive insult used to denigrate a person on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, etc.”
Teen idol	“A highly successful young actor, pop star, etc. (originally and often a male), having a very devoted, usually female, teenage fan base”

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17 Terms That Just Got Added to the Oxford English Dictionary

By Ellen Gutoskey | Mar 21, 2023