LONDON
The Cambridge Dictionary has added a selection of new TikTok phrases to the English language.
“Internet culture is changing the English language and the effect is fascinating to observe and capture in the dictionary,” said Cambridge Dictionary’s lexical program manager, Colin McIntosh.
“It’s not every day you get to see words like ‘skibidi’ and ‘delulu’ make their way into the Cambridge Dictionary. We only add words where we think they’ll have staying power,” McIntosh added.
The term “skibidi” became popular thanks to Skibidi Toilet – a viral animated video that began on YouTube featuring human heads protruding from toilets.
The Cambridge Dictionary defines skibidi as “a word that can have different meanings such as ‘cool’ or ‘bad’, or can be used with no real meaning as a joke,’ an example being: ‘What the skibidi are you doing?’”
“Tradwife” refers to socially conservative influencers who post on TikTok celebrating looking after their husbands, children and homes, while “Delulu”, an abbreviation of delusional, is defined as “believing things that are not real or true, usually because you choose to.”
However, people in older generations or those who don’t use TikTok aren’t particularly happy with the normalization of these words.
“Skibidi brainrot encapsulates a generation fluent in irony but starved for meaning. This kind of hyper-chaotic media serves as both entertainment and an ambient worldview for young men raised online. Their minds normalize prank-as-expression,” US writer and artist Lee Escobedo said.
