‘Trapo’ and ‘bongga’ make it into Oxford English Dictionary

Just in time for the upcoming 2019 midterm elections, the Oxford English Dictionary added ‘trapo’ in its extensive list of new words.

In a statement, the OED defined ‘trapo’ as “a politician perceived as belonging to a conventional and corrupt ruling class.”

The OED said the word exemplifies the “multilingualism of the Philippines” because not only ‘trapo’ means rag in Spanish, but it’s also a pun of English phrase ‘traditional politician.’

Another word that entered OED’s list was ‘bongga’ “which means extravagant, flamboyant, impressive, stylish, or (more generally) excellent.”

Among the 1400 new words, senses and phrases added this year are Filipino culinary words ‘bagoong,’ ‘bihon,’ ‘calamansi,’ ‘carinderia,’ ‘ensaimada,’ ‘palay,’ ‘panciteria,’ ‘sorbetes’ and ‘turon.’

The 134-year-old institution Oxford English Dictionary currently has over 600,000 English words in its repository. /muf/ac