If you think you’ve heard just about enough of Miley Cyrus, be prepared to hear just a little bit more. Cyrus’ sexually charged MTV Video Music Awards performance may have inspired the Oxford Dictionaries Online to add “twerk” to the dictionary.
Quartz has provided a partial list of some words that are being added to the dictionary, which include “phablet,” “BYOD,” “cakepop,” and “buzzworthy,” defines “twerk” as “dance to popular music in a sexually provocative manner involving thrusting hip movements and a low, squatting stance.”
Although the former Disney starlet seems to have inspired the word, showing off her twerk-tastic moves in a unicorn onesie among other radical outfits, the Associated Press notes that twerking may actually have been around for some two decades.
"There are many theories about the origin of this word, and since it arose in oral use, we may never know the answer for sure," Katherine Connor Martin of the Oxford Dictionaries said. "We think the most likely theory is that it is an alteration of work, because that word has a history of being used in similar ways, with dancers being encouraged to `work it.' The `t' could be a result of blending with another word such as twist or twitch."
Image: MTV
There has been a critical error on your website.