It’s official. Bitcoin is finally (officially) part of Scrabble. The newly-released Merriam-Webster’s Scrabble Dictionary now says Bitcoin, characterized as “a digital currency,” is a playable word in the popular game.
Scoring dictates that Bitcoin will go down as at least a nine-point word.
While Bitcoin has been included in normal dictionaries already, the Scrabble dictionary was last updated four years ago. It also includes a smaller list of words.
This seems to signify that Bitcoin (and other cryptocurrencies) are becoming more of a ‘household word’ each year.
Expanding The Game
Aside from Bitcoin, a couple of hundred new words were added to the game after being included in the new Scrabble Player’s Dictionary release.
Other playable words now include “OK,” qapik (a monetary unit in Azerbaijan), and “ew.”
Before updating the dictionary, Merriman-Webster’s asked for advice from the North American Scrabble Players Association to make sure the new inclusions were desired words.
“OK” was a popular addition because smaller words are an important element of the game, according to lexicographer Peter Sokolowski.
Growing Mainstream Acknowledgement Of Cryptocurrency
Merriman-Webster’s seems to be on top of changing technological trends.
In March, they added words like ‘Cryptocurrency, ‘Initial Coin Offering’ and ‘Blockchain’ to their (normal) dictionary in order to help clear up the “perplexing domain of digital financial exchanges.”
Bitcoin’s addition into the Scrabble lexicon seems to be a good bellwether for its continued popularity and acceptance among the mainstream.
The popular cryptocurrency recently found its way into one of Eminem’s newer songs, Not Alike, where Royce Da 5’9’ says “Remember everybody used to bite Nickel, now everybody doing bitcoin.”
Bitcoin has also made cameo appearances in television shows like “The Big Bang Theory and ‘Family Guy,” and was a recent plot point on a major British soap opera.
In an episode of “Coronation Street,” one character is on a frantic search to find the password to his ‘Whipcoin’ account, after seemingly realizing the digital currency had spiked in value.
Even though the investment was actually worthless in the end, Whipcoin was clearly paying homage to Bitcoin.
