Scrabble adds words like “facepalm” and “emoji” to dictionary in honor of board game’s 70th anniversary

Rejoice, word nerds! The future of Scrabble is here. In celebration of the classic word game’s 70th anniversary, Scrabble is adding new words to its dictionary — and we’ve got our eye on that coveted triple-triple move.

The sixth edition of Merriam-Webster’s The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary, coming this fall, will contain over 300 new words to up your game. As the first update to the game’s dictionary since 2014, the new version will include some killer modern additions like “sriracha,” “emoji,” “ew,” and “facepalm.”

That’s right. Facepalm is now Scrabble-legal.

As it turns out, these new additions aren’t just particularly popular words, nor are they randomly chosen. All new words have to meet certain criteria set by the game’s rules, Entertainment Weekly reported. First, they “must be found in a standard dictionary and cannot be abbreviations, capitalized words, or words containing hyphens or apostrophes.” New words also have to be “between 2-8 letters in length.”

Some people might not be fans of the Scrabble dictionary evolving, but we’re loving the new options.

"For a living language, the only constant is change. New dictionary entries reflect our language and our culture, including rich sources of new words such as communication technology and food terms from foreign languages," Peter Sokolowski, editor-at-large of Merriam-Webster, told EW about the update. "The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary evolves to keep up with English as it is used today."

In other words, language has *always* evolved to include new words, and that’s not a bad thing.

Merriam-Webster releases new updates to its dictionary every year, so the additions to the next Scrabble dictionary are long overdue. You can get your copy in September 2018!

In the meantime, be sure to celebrate the word game’s 70th anniversary by playing with your friends. You can even follow the advice of Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel and make it a date night.

P.S. We hear there are some words pretty much guaranteed to boost your score. Don’t tell your opponent, though.