Hasbro, the company that markets Scrabble, has invited players (actually, all and sundry) to nominate a word to be included in the next edition of The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary.

“To keep relevant for today’s fans, Scrabble and Merriam-Webster … have reserved a spot in the dictionary for a word nominated and chosen by Scrabble fans during the Scrabble Word Showdown,” a news release from the company said.

Hasbro seems to have in mind words like “selfie” and “hashtag,” pointing to “changes in technology, trends and pop culture events [that] have introduced many new words” since the last edition of the Scrabble dictionary was published in 2005.

But surely we can do better than that. Continue reading →