Thousands of new English words have been added to the Cambridge Dictionary, the world’s most popular online dictionary for learners of English, so far in 2024. Language is always changing, and this means that the Cambridge Dictionary team stays busy researching new words and meanings that enter the English language.

We’re sharing some examples from our recent additions that show the fascinating variety of English.

Informal terms such as the ick, meaning ‘a sudden feeling that you dislike someone or something or are no longer attracted to someone because of something they do’, and boop, meaning ‘a gentle hit or touch on a person's or animal's nose or head, showing that you like them or as a joke’ have been added in its recent update.

Other examples of slang recently added include:

chef's kiss noun
a movement in which you put your fingers and thumb together, kiss them, then pull your hand away from your lips as a way of showing that you think that something or someone is perfect or excellent 

You can also use “chef’s kiss” to refer to something that you think is perfect or excellent, or as an adjective to describe something like this. 

IYKYK
written abbreviation for “if you know you know”: used, for example on social media and in text messages, to show that there is a shared joke or shared knowledge with the reader that other people might not understand 

face journey noun
a series of expressions that appear on someone's face showing different emotions that they are experiencing as a reaction to something 

Many new additions come from the fields of science and technology, including scicomm ‘the activity of explaining scientific work and information to people who are not scientists, or articles, talks, etc. that do this’ and deep-sky ‘existing in or relating to the part of space outside the solar system’. Other new additions include:

OLED
abbreviation for “organic light-emitting diode”: a type of diode (= a device that controls an electric current so that it can only flow in one direction) that contains an organic compound (= a chemical that combines two or more elements including carbon) and produces light. OLEDs are used in screens to produce very bright, clear pictures 

microsleep noun
the act of sleeping for just a few seconds, or an occasion when someone does this

key logger noun
a piece of technology that records each key that is pressed on the keyboard of a particular computer 

one-time password noun
a secret word, series of numbers, or combination of letters and numbers that is used for communicating with a computer to prove who you are and that can be used only once 

Online gaming also inspired several additions, such as backread ‘to read through a series of messages or internet posts that you did not see when they were first created, often starting with the most recent, in order to learn what happened or was discussed earlier’, speedrun ‘to complete a computer game, or part of a computer game, as quickly as possible, especially by taking advantage of any glitches’ and side quest ‘a part of a computer game that has its own aim and story but is not part of the main game’.

Other new additions from the gaming world include:

MMORPG noun
abbreviation for massively multiplayer online role-playing game: a computer game that can be played by many people at the same time and in which players control the actions of characters in an imaginary world

PvP noun
abbreviation for player versus player: (in computer games) a game or way of playing a game in which there are many players who are each other’s opponents and can attack each other

If you don’t enjoy PvP, how about PvE, or “player versus engine”? 

The Cambridge Dictionary records how English is actually used by real people.

We use the Cambridge English Corpus, a huge collection of written and spoken English, to gather evidence for how a new word is used by different people and in a variety of situations.

We also collect evidence of new words that have only appeared in English very recently. We feature three of these on our weekly About Words blog, where readers can vote on which words they think should be added to the dictionary.