Thousands of new words added to Scrabble dictionary

Thousands of new words - including slang terms lolz, shizzle and obvs - have been added to the latest Scrabble word list, its publisher has said.

About 6,500 words have been added to the latest Collins Scrabble Word List, including a number of slang terms used on social media and in text messages.

New words include twerking, emoji, bezzy and ridic - short for ridiculous.

One the highest scoring new entries is quinzhee - an Inuit snow shelter - which scores 29 Scrabble points.

Other new words now acceptable in the board game include onesie, devo - short for devolution - vape, and shootie, meaning a fashionable shoe that covers the ankle.

Eew, yeesh, waah

New words involving technology include facetime, hashtag, and sexting, while exclamations such as augh, blech, eew, grr, waah and yeesh have also been added.

It is the first update to the list since 2011.

New entries - along with what the word scores in Scrabble - include:

• Dench - meaning excellent - 11 points

• Geocache - a recreation activity that sees contenders searching for hidden containers, using GPS - 16 points

• Lotsa - meaning lots of - 5 points

• Newb - short for newbie - 9 points

• Thanx - short for thank you - 15 points

• Hacktivist - a person who hacks computer systems for political reasons - 22 points

• Cazh - meaning casual - 18 points

• Checkbox - a small clickable box on a computer screen - 28 points

The Scrabble dictionary includes words from Australia, Canada, South Africa, the UK and the US in a single list.

"Dictionaries have always included formal and informal English, but it used to be hard to find printed evidence of the use of slang words," Helen Newstead, head of language content at Collins, said.

"Now people use slang in social media posts, tweets, blogs, comments, text messages - you name it - so there's a host of evidence for informal varieties of English that simply didn't exist before."