New Delhi: —Oxford University Press launches the Oxford English Dictionary’s (OED) youth slang word appeal.

‘Feminism is not equal to hating men.  Get your fundas right’

8 August 2018

‘Huh?  It’s some arbit whatsapp forward’

24 Feb 2015

‘This SpongeBob in Hindi is just ridic funny. Honestly :)’

4 Jan 2014

If you understand these Twitter entries, then you may be able to help the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) with our latest appeal. We want to hear about the unique words and expressions that children and young people use.  If you don’t understand it then the OED can come to your rescue.

The words that many of us hear for the first time from younger people often have a bigger story to tell about varieties of English used by particular ethnic or cultural groups, and their influence on the language as a whole. The OED’s aim is to record all distinctive words that shape the language, old and new, formal and informal. Slang terms are always challenging for dictionary editors to track but young people’s language today can be particularly elusive—because the terms that are in vogue change so rapidly and newer ephemeral modes of communication (texting, WhatsApp, Snapchat, etc.) make it difficult to monitor and record this kind of vocabulary. That’s why we are asking for your help in identifying the language used by children and teenagers today.

Even if the examples above leave you bewildered, you can still help us. Do your children, grandchildren, students, or teenage neighbours use words that are completely unfamiliar to you—or familiar words in very unfamiliar ways?  Or perhaps you remember words or terms from your own childhood that are not yet recorded in the dictionary—the names of playground games, for example? We’d love to hear about those, too. Join the conversation on Twitter at #youthslangappeal or send your words to our website.

Danica Salazar, World English Editor at OUP, comments: “Multilingual, multicultural, and technologically savvy, young people in India are changing the lexicon in ways that lexicographers find particularly innovative, but also elusive. By taking words from the many languages they speak, then taking them apart and putting them back together again, children and teenagers create what seems like a secret vocabulary full of imaginative new words and meanings that are distinctly Indian. The OED is reaching out to these young wordsmiths to help us record the slang words that they have invented.”