The Cambridge Dictionary’s recent decision to add terms like delulu, skibidi, and tradwife officially to the dictionary has sparked both delight and some criticism. For people in favour of the decision, this is proof that dictionaries are catching up with reality, reflecting the way people actually speak. For sceptics, it is another example of a serious institution chasing cultural fads. This decision raises a deeper question: When slang already has a home in spaces like Urban Dictionary, do traditional dictionaries need to move this fast — and at what cost?
Language has never been static. Slang is the lifeblood of creativity, rebellion, and generational identity. Shakespeare’s playful coinages were once derided, only to become standard English. Indian English itself is rich with innovations—words like “prepone” or “out of station” that baffled outsiders have found permanence in our day-to-day life. In that light, delulu (shorthand for delusional, rebranded as aspirational) or skibidi (a nonsense affirmation) might be dismissed today but could surprise us tomorrow.
Still, not all slang survives. “On fleek” once dominated Instagram captions, but today it feels like a fossil from the 2010s. Internet culture churns faster than any earlier slang cycle. The risk is that Cambridge is mistaking virality for vitality—immortalising a meme that may fade before the ink dries.
Dictionaries like Cambridge, Oxford, or Merriam-Webster have long carried a special weight: They are not simply lists of words; they are arbiters of legitimacy. For students, professionals, and non-native learners, such inclusion signals not just that a word exists, but that it is correct, worthy, and part of the mainstream.
This is where Urban Dictionary provides a useful contrast. Since 1999, it has served as the messy, democratic archive of slang. Anyone can coin a term, anyone can define it, and multiple contradictory definitions often coexist. No one looks at Urban Dictionary for “correct” English — they look for a snapshot of how subcultures speak in the moment. It thrives precisely because it is unfiltered, ephemeral, even chaotic.
When Cambridge begins to function like Urban Dictionary, it risks collapsing that distinction. The whole point of an authoritative dictionary is its curation, its patience, its slow weighing of evidence. By racing to include meme-born terms, Cambridge risks reducing itself to a better-edited Urban Dictionary: Documenting noise instead of filtering it.
The case of delulu illustrates another complication. While TikTok and Instagram Reel users embrace it in self-deprecating, empowering ways (“delulu is the solulu”), its root word— delusional —is a psychiatric descriptor. Mental health professionals have warned that casual slang risks trivialising serious conditions. A dictionary’s act of inclusion is never neutral: It normalises usage, lending cultural sanction to what might otherwise remain a passing inside joke.
Urban Dictionary thrives on this ambiguity. It is understood as tongue-in-cheek, a place where irony and exaggeration dominate. But Cambridge does not enjoy the same luxury. Its definitions shape classrooms, corporate communication, and second-language acquisition. That authority carries responsibility.
To be fair, some inclusions—like tradwife —point to enduring cultural debates. The term captures an ideological movement of women embracing hyper-traditional gender roles, a phenomenon unlikely to vanish overnight. Recording such words is not frivolous but essential to preserve the political discourse. But lumping tradwife with skibidi suggests a lack of distinction between words that document cultural fault lines and those that simply ride the algorithm.
The answer is not to freeze language. But dictionaries could consider layered recognition. Urban Dictionary will always exist as the rough draft of internet English; authoritative dictionaries could function as the final draft, slower but more deliberate.
By signalling which words are under observation, and which have crossed the threshold into lasting usage, dictionaries can balance reflection with responsibility. Otherwise, we risk losing the value of authoritative dictionaries altogether — if everything viral becomes official, then “official” loses its meaning.
Their real value lies not in chasing noise, but in distinguishing what endures. Language will always evolve—but only some words deserve to last, and discerning that difference is what separates a dictionary from a timeline.
anusree.kc@expressindia.com
