NEW YORK — Attention, word nerds: This is your bonus round, courtesy of Merriam-Webster.

In addition to elevating “surreal” in 2016 to word of the year, the dictionary company on Tuesday added about 1,000 new words and new definitions to existing listings on its website, Merriam-webster.com.

Among 17 of the latest disclosed by the company are: “arancini,” those stuffed, breaded and fried Italian rice balls, “conlang,” meaning an invented language like Klingon, “fast fashion” and “microaggression,” a flash-point favorite on some college campuses.

The rest? Well, it’s up to language treasure hunters to find those for themselves.

This is the first time the company has freshened up website listings since 2014, when it added entries to a new paper edition of its collegiate book and online at the same time.

“Some of these we’ve been watching for many years and some of these are very new words,” said Peter Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster’s editor at large.

Alphabetically speaking, arancini leads the charge. Foreign food words are among the richest sources of new words in English and this one is borrowed from the Italian for “little orange.” Besides, Sokolowski said in a recent interview, “Anything that’s deep fried is good. We’ve all had them but I didn’t know this name. We all love exploring the world through food.”

The fresh entries also include: “Seussian,” for “having a playful or outlandish quality” relating to the works of beloved children’s writer Dr. Seuss, aka Theodore Geisel; “microbiome,” for communities of bacteria, fungi and viruses inhabiting a particular environment, most notably the human body; and – last but not least – recognition for a slang definition of “shade,” as in throwing some publicly as a subtle or indirect insult.

“This is social media speaking,” Sokolowski said of shade. “What I like about it is that it assumes a very highly informed reader. It assumes you will get the whole joke.”


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