Scrabble Attempts to Go Hip

May 17, 2011 / Melody Smith /

It is a sad, sad day for word lovers around the world. Scrabble has announced it is adding slang words to their dictionary. I think I’d like to challenge that.

We found this disheartening news on CourierMail in their article, “Scrabble goes street as slang terms like ‘innit’ added to dictionary.” Technology-related words such as “webzine” and “Facebook” are among the 3,000 new words added to the latest edition of the Collins Official Scrabble Words book, compiled by staff in Glasgow. Slang terms including “innit” and “thang” have also been added to the official list of words that can be used in the popular board game Scrabble. The publishers call it the most comprehensive Scrabble wordlist ever produced. Traditionalists will disagree.

I appreciate their effort at inclusiveness, but it saddens the nostalgic side of me. I’ve loved playing Scrabble since I was old enough to spell. In fact, it helped teach me to spell. “Innit” seems contradictory to that.

Melody K. Smith

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Melody Smith

Melody K. Smith has provided organizational, social media and digital communication services to a large non-profit for the past twenty years. Prior to that she championed employee engagement and communications in the healthcare field. She holds a Bachelors degree in Marketing. When not wrangling and writing TaxoDiary content for your reading pleasure, Melody writes fiction, rescues dogs and throws legendary dinner parties.

2 Comments

  1. Alice Redmond-Neal on May 17, 2011 at 7:59 pm

    spellng–that was a spelling innovation in itself!



  2. Alice Redmond-Neal on May 17, 2011 at 7:58 pm

    I share your regret about losing Scrabble’s orthographic strictness. I hope players have the most current and lenient dictionary to justify their innovative spellng.