If someone has “strong and heavy music” on, in Spanish you can ask them, dictionary in hand, to please turn down that chundachunda. Likewise, video arbitration and its acronym VAR will be found in the RAE dictionary. In the social field, you can use sinhogarismo without conditions, to refer to the “circumstance of the person lacking a home to live in and, generally, any means of livelihood”. In addition, the dictionary will inform you that indigencia is a synonym. These are some of the 4,381 innovations and modifications in the annual update of the Diccionario de la lengua española (DLE), prepared by the RAE and the Association of Academies of the Spanish Language (Asale).
On this occasion, the noun perreo and the corresponding verb ( perrear ) have also been incorporated, which is the “dance that is generally performed to the rhythm of reggaeton, with erotic movements of the hips, and in which, when danced by couples, the man is usually positioned behind the woman with their bodies very close together”. Also, there is room for the machirulo, which is the man “who exhibits a macho attitude” and who we hope is on the way to extinction. And in italics we find feng shui, which is “the art or technique based on a philosophical system of ancient China consisting of applying to spaces a series of principles that seek to achieve harmony and well-being for the people who inhabit them” .
However, the main novelty of 2023 is not a word or a definition, but a new feature of the DLE. With 280,000 synonyms and antonyms, the normative dictionary takes a giant step forward and is enriched as a work tool. Now, when a word is consulted, if it has synonyms and cognates, or antonyms and opposites, they appear within the same entry, properly linked so that the user can navigate from one word to the other, and learn its meaning , the scope of use (social or territorial) and the etymology.
The novelties of this 2023 were broken down by the director of the RAE and president of the Asale, Santiago Muñoz Machado, who announced a complete renewal of the dictionary for 2026, and the head of the Institute of Lexicography of the RAE, Elena Zamora The director of the dictionary, the academic Paz Battaner, recently asked to be relieved of this responsibility, and the director announced that, from January, it will be the new academic María Dolores Corbella who will assume the direction of the DLE.
