When a word is granted a definition in the Oxford English Dictionary, it has officially made it. The team at OED remain some of the most respected custodians of the English language, and when a word makes it in that means it has graduated from the realms of jargon and slang to actual legitimacy.

‘Twerk’, ‘selfie’ and ‘food baby’ have not made it into the fabled pages yet, and it could be a while. But they’re one step closer at least, as the slightly more casual Oxford Dictionaries Online has opted to grant them an entry.

The latest print edition of the OED remains a definitive resource for linguists and Scrabble enthusiasts, and its editors tend to have a rule that a word must be current for ten years before being included. But that timescale doesn’t quite cut it online. In a world of Wikipedia, Urban Dictionary and any number of free dictionaries, Oxford Online has opted to keep up-to-date with some of the latest ‘buzzwords’.

The three mentioned above are some of the latest additions announced today, along with such hip words/phrases as ‘space tourism’, ‘TL;DR’ (i.e. too long, didn’t read), ‘phablet’, ‘srsly’ and ‘squee’. You can read the full list here.

Still, they all have some way to go before they join luminaries such as ‘mochachino’, ‘tweet’ and ‘flash mob’ - some of the 1200 new entries included in the June 2013 revision of the printed edition. ‘Tweet’ - in its Twitter form - even broke the long-standing ‘decade of usage’ rule.

We know you want to know, by the way: ‘twerk’ is defined as ‘to dance to popular music in a sexually provocative manner involving thrusting hip movements and a low, squatting stance’.