Merriam Webster plays with RPGs

Is there anything cooler or nerdier than checkin’ out the new words that are being added to the dictionary? I don’t think so. Merriam-Webster recently clued us in to some of the new additions that will be showing up in the 2007 update of its Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition, and I cannot tell you how excited I was to see that such glorious units of language as DVR and soduku were being given a hearty literary slap-on-the-back of approval.

And wait! What’s this? Also on the new-word list: RPG. Wow: are role-playing games finally being recognized by the tome that, I can note that in my capacity as a professional editor, is, in its various editions, the official dictionary of choice for 99.9 percent of major magazines and book publishers? But no: geekiness has not won out. Merriam Webster thinks “RPG” means rocket-propelled grenade. Real-life desert warriors trump the half-elven kind.

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