'Twerking' dances its way into the Oxford dictionary

"Twerking", the raunchy dance made famous by Miley Cyrus, has been included in the latest revision of the Oxford Dictionaries Online.

Cyrus brought the move to many people's attention in her We Can't Stop music video and upped the ante during recent her performance with Robin Thicke at the VMA Awards.

But Oxford Dictionaries Online spokeswoman Katherine Connor Martin said the word "twerk" was around 20 years old and seemed to have been coined as part of the "bounce" hip-hop scene in the US.

However, Connor Martin said it was not until last year that it had "generated enough currency" to be added to the dictionary's new words watch list.

"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 added.

The dance move's listing reads: "The twerk, v.: dance to popular music in a sexually provocative manner involving thrusting hip movements and a low, squatting stance."

Other new words included in the dictionary are "selfie" for a camera-phone self-portrait, "digital detox" for time spent offline, the online currency Bitcoin, the shopping phrase "click and collect" and "hackerspace".

The quarterly update for the site also includes words from the worlds of food and drink and fashion.

"Street food", "pear cider" and "food baby" - a swollen stomach from eating too much - made it in, as do "double denim" and "geek chic".