3.15.2005

'Wedgie' Added to Webster's Dictionary

Via my friend Jim McPherson in Orlando who says:
"If you have to look it up---
you really are a nerd. And if
you are a nerd you've
probably got first hand
experience with it anyways!!!"


By Associated Press

March 15, 2005, 11:56 AM EST

CLEVELAND -- Wedgie, a teenager's locker-room nightmare, has made it into the dictionary. Webster's New World College Dictionary based in Cleveland said wedgie was among its new additions to its latest edition.

The new edition will carry this listing: wedgie: noun. a prank in which the victim's undershorts are jerked upward so as to become wedged between the buttocks.

The dictionary also carries the tradition wedgie definition of a type of shoe.

"`Wedgie' was always a part of the high school terminology that you sort of never thought about later," said Editor in Chief Michael Agnes.

"It never really entered the mainstream until the '90s. It broke out of high school and, boy -- if you don't know what it is, you're absolutely at a loss."

The new edition will reach bookstores by May and has 58 new entries, plus another 20 new senses of existing words (such as wedgie).

The additions include Al Qaeda, blog, cargo pants, irritable bowel syndrome and partial-birth abortion.

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