Twerk it out: Raunchy dance now in dictionary
The move, which the 20-year-old US singer and actress showed off with the help of singer Robin Thicke, has been included in the latest revision of Oxford Dictionaries Online.
New technology has also provided a large number of new words and phrases for the site, including “selfie” for a camera-phone self-portrait, “digital detox” for time spent offline, and the shopping phrase “click and collect”.
Katherine Connor Martin, from Oxford Dictionaries Online, said “twerk” was around 20 years old and seemed to have been coined as part of the “bounce” hip-hop scene in the US.
“By last year, it had generated enough currency to be added to our new words watch list, and by this spring, we had enough evidence of usage frequency in a breadth of sources to consider adding it to our dictionaries of current English,” she said.
“There are many theories about the origin of this word, and since it arose in oral use, we may never know the answer for sure.
“We think the most likely theory is that it is an alteration of work, because that word has a history of being used in similar ways, with dancers being encouraged to ‘work it’. The ‘t’ could be a result of blending with another word such as twist or twitch.
“The current public reaction to twerking is reminiscent in some ways of how the twisting craze was regarded in the early 1960s, when it was first popularised by Chubby Checker’s song, ‘The Twist’.”
The dance style’s listing reads: “The twerk, v.: dance to popular music in a sexually provocative manner involving thrusting hip movements and a low, squatting stance”.
Cyrus made headlines with the risqué performance in a nude PVC bikini at the awards in New York on Sunday.
