I'm Really Going To Need Dictionaries To Stop Trying To Be Cool After One Added The Word 'Skibidi'

Everyone is rushing to keep up with the times — especially nowadays, when it seems like technology is making everything change in the blink of an eye — and that includes dictionaries.

Remember? They are those big, heavy books that you use as something heavy to flatten a poster, prop open a door, or, hey, you can even use them to look up what words mean.

Of course, language changes and evolves, and the dictionaries need to keep up with that. This is why they periodically add new words, and that's what the Cambridge Dictionary was doing when it decided that it was officially time to add some Gen Alpha slang terms to the dictionary.

This round, 6,000 new words got the nod, and that included — according to Fox 5 New York — words like "inspo," "delulu," "tradwife," and "skibidi."

Dictionaries do this all the time to stay relevant, but this time around, I officially became done with it.

It's time dictionaries realize they're not relevant anymore and stop trying to be hip.

First of all, when was the last time you used an actual dictionary? I don't think I've touched one since high school. Right now, I don't even own one, and my job is pretty heavy on words.

That's because I live in the year of our Lord 2025 and have a computer. In fact, I'm typing on one computer, I have another in my pocket, and a third one on my wrist. I'm basically 5 percent cyborg.

So, these days, if you need to know the definition of a word, you google it or you ask an AI chatbot for the answer.

*Poindexter voice* "But Matt, those still use electronic versions of the dictionary to function."

Ugh. Someone's asking for a wedgie…

Kids aren't clamoring for dictionaries no matter how many TikTok slang terms you put in them. (Getty Images)

Old School Dictionaries Are Obsolete And Need To Stop Trying To Get Down With The Kids, Yo

That's true, but now the dictionaries we use aren't the Merriam-Webster or the Cambridge or the Oxford, it's the one Apple installed on our phones.

And, if that fails, I have the entire internet to help me out. Even if you need to know a slang term, your first pit stop isn't one of those dusty old dictionaries; you go to Urban Dictionary.

Which is why I think this is all an attention ploy because while I'm sure there are real words among those 6,000 that were added, the four that I mentioned are the ones that got people talking, and there's no reason for them to be in the dictionary at all.

"Inspo" is short for "inspiration," a word that is already in the dictionary.

"Delulu" means delusional; also already in the dictionary.

"Tradwife" is a mash-up of traditional and wife — that's pretty much the definition too — and both words are already in the dictionary.

The outlier is "skibidi," which is a nonsense word that can mean "cool" or "bad."

It can mean anything, which makes it "smurf" for kids who grew up on Fortnite.

But this is a sad ploy to make kids who have never really lived a second of their lives without an iPad in their hands think that dictionaries are hip and "skibidi."

They're not… unless you meant "skibidi" as bad, in which case, sure, that works.