New words for dictionary? Simples!

'Simples' made it into a dictionary courtesy of Aleksandr the Meerkat from a price comparison website ad
12 April 2012

"Fauxmance", "tweetheart" and "bigotgate" are among the popular terms to have made it into the latest Collins English Dictionary.

"Cleggmania" and "Con-Lib" may not have meant much to anyone a year ago but have also found themselves listed in the literary tool published this week.

Collins have added dozens of new words in an effort to reflect developments in popular culture, business and politics.

TV has made a big impression, with the inclusion of "BGT" - the acronym denoting hit show Britain's Got Talent - and "simples", meaning easy to do, arrives courtesy of Aleksandr the Meerkat from the advert for price comparison website comparethemarket.com.

Social networking site Twitter is responsible for a whole new vocabulary including "tweetheart" - a user who is admired by others and "tweet tooth" - a strong desire to send a tweet.

"Fauxmance" refers to "a fictitious romance between two celebrities, concocted in order to gain press coverage".

Meanwhile former prime minister Gordon Brown will not be allowed to forget his encounter with disillusioned Labour supporter Gillian Duffy in Rochdale in April as "bigotgate" is preserved in print.

His successor David Cameron's contribution is "broken society" - described by Collins as a perceived or apparent general decline in moral values.

Wordsmiths based in Glasgow identified the new inclusions using a 2.5 billion-word database.

Written material from websites, newspapers, magazines and books and spoken material from radio, TV and everyday conversations is fed into the database each month to help keep editors abreast of new language trends.

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