DICTIONARIES have admitted defeat and announced that from now on ‘lose’ will be spelt ‘loose’.

The move follows the apparent inability of the entire English-speaking world to spell a simple four-letter word correctly, and is a profound humiliation for Western civilisation.

Oxford English Dictionary editor Julian Cook said: “You cannot win a battle against 300 million illiterate idiots. You can only loose.

“We’ve fought bravely to defend intellectual standards and educate people that ‘loose’ is already an actual word with a specific meaning but they weren’t having it.

“It means ‘not tight’, by the way.

“Ultimately language is owned by its users, even if they are pillocks. So from now on, ‘lose’ is spelt ‘loose’. And we are all the loosers.”

Emma Bradford of Hitchin said: “It really annoys me when people say ‘specifically’ when they actually mean ‘pacifically’. Fix that next.”