This article was taken from the July 2012 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
Being included in the Oxford English Dictionary is an English word's equivalent of a knighthood. But, as our infographic shows, a word can be around for a long time before it makes the cut.
The OED online is updated four times a year, and each entry gives the date of the first verified printed usage of a word.
This data can be used to find the time lag for some of last year's new words. In this sample, the average time lag was 64 years. Some apparently modern terms are really quite old: "terror threat" and "OMG" both date from 1917, while others are genuinely recent: "wag" and "muffin top" are both less than ten years old.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
