Six Words From ‘Charlie And The Chocolate Factory’ Have Been Added To The Oxford English Dictionary

Roald Dahl is famous for his fantastic works of children’s literature, but more importantly, he’s famous for creating so many fun terms and words that are now part of our every day vocabulary. His famous books Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and James and the Giant Peach are good examples of made-up words that have taken over our lives in the last few years or so. But the words were never really accepted as anything but just gibberish and cute things we picked up from books.

Till now!

To honour Roald Dahl’s 100^th birthday, the quarterly update to the Oxford English Dictionary includes a range of revised and newly drafted entries connected to the beloved British author. Among the revisions are words like scrummy, scrumptious and splendiferous, but the new additions are the ones that are important.

Made famous in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the word scrumdiddlyumptious has now been added to the Dictionary. And the official definition is “extremely scrumptious; excellent, splendid; (esp. of food) delicious.” Also added is human bean,w which is a colloquial word defined as “a humorous alteration or mispronunciation of human being.”

Other words that have been included and inspired by the book and the movies are:
Everlasting Gobstopper: A candy that lasts forever. According to Willy Wonka, “you can suck ’em and suck ’em and suck ’em, and they’ll never get any smaller.”

Snozzberry: A mystery fruit that turns up in flavored wallpaper.

Eggdicator: A machine that discriminates between bad eggs and good eggs.

Veruca Salt: An incredibly high-maintenance girl who, as her name suggests, tends to act rather salty.

Eatable: Another, more fun, word for edible. “Everything in this room in eatable,” says Wonka.