'Twerking' has definitely seen a rise in popularity lately, perhaps due in part to Miley Cyrus' viral bunny suit video, or just because of the ever-expanding reach of hip-hop culture.
Now 'twerk' is becoming so mainstream that the Oxford Dictionaries Online is recognizing it as a word, adding it to their quarterly update. The update also includes 'selfies'.
Katherine Connor Martin from Oxford Dictionaries says of the addition of 'twerk', "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 continued to talk about the history of the word. "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," she said. "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."
