Skibidi, delulu: Online slangs make Cambridge cut

Acknowledging the influence of the Internet and social media on the English language, Cambridge Dictionary has included ‘skibidi’, ‘delulu’ and ‘tradwife’ among its 6,000 new additions this year.

“Internet culture is changing English and the effect is fascinating to observe and capture in the dictionary,” said Colin McIntosh, lexical programme manager at Cambridge Dictionary.

‘Skibidi’ is a gibberish term that has been coined by the creator of an animated YouTube series and can mean “cool”, “bad” or can even be used with no real meaning as a joke.

Other planned additions include “tradwife”, a contraction of the term “traditional wife” — referring to a married mother who cooks, cleans and posts on social media.

“Delulu” — a shortened form of the word delusional that means “believing things that are not real or true, usually because you choose to” – is another word that will be added to the dictionary.

An increase in remote working since the pandemic has created the entry “mouse jiggler”. It means a device or software used to make it seem like you are working when you are not.

Concerns over climate change are behind the addition of “forever chemical” — a harmful chemical that remains in the environment for a long time. The dictionary uses a database of two billion words of written and spoken English to monitor how new words are used by different people, how often and in what contexts, the company said.