The word "tweet," meaning a message posted on the social media site Twitter, was first recognized as an official word by Merriam-Webster in 2011, and in June 2013, the word was added to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). The addition of "tweet" occurred about two years after OED had made an official word of "retweet," which means to forward another person’s tweet. Each dictionary has its own rules about the criteria a word must meet before being added, but exceptions might be made for words that gain widespread usage especially quickly. For example, OED generally requires a word to have been in use for 10 years before being added, but "tweet" was added about six years after it was first used in this context.
More about Twitter:
- As of 2013, the tweet with the record of most retweets was US President Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection victory tweet, which had more than 800,000 retweets.
- It is estimated that more than 1 billion tweets are sent every five days.
- About one-third of all Internet users worldwide are thought to have Twitter accounts.
