From 'steampunk' to 'tweep' and 'pho', the latest entries have been in common usage for years – if not decades

Just how new are the Merriam-Webster dictionary's new words?

Several times a year one or other major dictionary will announce a list of words it is including for the first time. This is excellent publicity for the dictionary, and it's also a form of gentle social-media trolling, provoking sticklers to charge that lexicographers who allow "twerk" into the dictionary are literally destroying the English language as we know it.

This week, it was Merriam-Webster's turn. Its latest update includes "turducken", "a boneless chicken stuffed into a boneless duck stuffed into a boneless turkey". But how new are Merriam's "new" words? Even the hideously kitschy "tweep" (a Twitter follower) is as old as 2008. The Oxford English Dictionary got to "big data" first, and Merriam is a bit behind the times in finally including "steampunk", which has been around for at least 30 years.

Some might quibble, too, with Merriam's new definitions. A "selfie", it says, is "an image of oneself taken by oneself using a digital camera especially for posting on social networks". Technically this is true, but the "digital camera" in question (does anyone actually say "digital camera" any more, now that it is by far the most common kind of camera?) is almost always the one built into a mobile phone. Selfies, surely, are fundamentally a phone-based medium. In any case, "selfie" was already chosen as Oxford Dictionaries' 2013 word of the year, and things have moved on to plausibly useful variations such as "belfie" (bum selfie) and "drelfie" (drunk selfie).

The cultural routine of the dictionary's "new words" list, then, is not about cutting-edge linguistic news; it's merely a welcome excuse for word-fanciers worldwide to indulge in another little fiesta of pleasurable pedantry. Everybody wins. That said, I saw a really disgusting new word for the first time today. It is "branter", for "brand banter" on corporations' social-media accounts. My God, if they ever let that into the dictionary, it really will be the end of civilisation.

10 more of Merriam-Webster's "new" words

Crowdfunding: the practice of soliciting financial contributions from a large number of people especially from the online community.

Fracking: the injection of fluid into shale beds at high pressure in order to free up petroleum resources.

Freegan: an activist who scavenges for free food (as in waste receptacles at stores and restaurants) as a means of reducing consumption of resources.

Hashtag: a word or phrase preceded by the symbol # that classifies or categorises the accompanying text (such as a tweet).

Yooper: a native or resident of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan – used as a nickname.

Catfish: a person who sets up a false personal profile on a social networking site for fraudulent or deceptive purposes.

Pho: a soup made of beef or chicken broth and rice noodles.

Poutine: a dish of French fries covered with brown gravy and cheese curds.

Gamification: the process of adding games or gamelike elements to something (as a task) so as to encourage participation.

Social networking: the creation and maintenance of personal and business relationships, especially online.