Zen, Selfie, CrayCray? Scrabble Fans Vote for New Dictionary Word

The game’s manufacturer Hasbro is revising the Merriam-Webster's dictionary for the first since 2005

Playing made up words that sound like the real thing to fool your relatives has been a long-standing tradition in the game of Scrabble. Now players have a chance to nominate a word they’d like to see added to The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary.

The game’s manufacturer Hasbro is revising the Merriam-Webster's dictionary for the first time since 2005. Over the years, words like tweet, selfie and hashtag have become part of the lexicon, and the dictionary is going to be amended with thousands of new words, according to USA Today.

At least one of the words will be picked by a Scrabble player. Fans have until March 28 to suggest words on the Hasbro Game Night Facebook page.

On April 2, Merriam-Webster will announce 16 finalists and fans can vote for their favorite word.

"The Scrabble Word Showdown will let fans nominate and vote on words that are fun and relevant for today’s players,” Jonathan Berkowitz, Hasbro's marketing VP, said in a statement.

The winning word will be revealed on April 10 and included in the updated edition of the Scrabble dictionary, which will go on sale in August. The fan-nominated word will also become playable in digital versions of the game.

A sampling of words nominated on Hasbro's Facebook page included: texting, ew, zen, fracking, craycray, zoomba and twerk.

"Fracking," Rachel K. Gillette said in her submission. "I was surprised that this was NOT a word yet! Played at last year's Scrabble Nationals! I hear it every day!"

"Zen," Mark Tyrell suggested. "I get ironically angry every time I go to play it and can't."

"'EW'" - I've been playing it in protest for years," wrote Jessica Alison Azar.  "That, or I always forget that it's not one of the two-letter words."

Hasbro seemed on board with Azar's suggestion, responding, "Maybe it's time then that your unofficial word became official!"

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