Urban Dictionary

Urban Dictionary

Type of site	Slang Dictionary
Available in	English
Owner	Aaron Peckham
Created by	Aaron Peckham
URL	www.urbandictionary.com
Commercial	Yes
Registration	Only Needed to Assist Editing the Website

Urban Dictionary is a Web-based dictionary of slang words and phrases. As of June 21, 2009, the site claims "4,058,177 definitions written since 1999." Submissions are regulated by volunteer editors and rated by site visitors. Time magazine's Anita Hamilton placed the Urban Dictionary on her 50 best websites of 2008 list.

History

The dictionary was founded in 1999 by Aaron Peckham, then a freshman computer science major at California Polytechnic State University.

Content

The definitions on Urban Dictionary are meant to be of slang or subculture words, phrases, and phenomena not found in standard dictionaries. Most words have multiple definitions, usage examples, and tags. Many of the entries on Urban Dictionary are coarse, profane or offensive. A high percentage of entries are sexual. Many appear to be the inventions of users either for purposes of mischief or fame-seeking. Although some of the entries come with pictures, users cannot directly upload pictures into the site.

Racist, homonegative or sexist terms are acceptable as long as their definitions only document the use of such slurs and are not themselves abusive. Site guidelines recommend that submitters and volunteer editors shun definitions that include inside jokes, personal references to non-celebrities, nonsense, advertisements, or descriptions of sexual violence. However, the website does little to prevent definitions with those traits from appearing. Urban Dictionary's chief definition of "Urban Dictionary" reads: "A place formerly used to find out about slang, and now a place that teens use as a burn book to talk about celebrities, their friends, let out their sexual frustrations, show off their racist/sexist/homophobic/anti-(insert religion here) opinions, troll, and babble about things they know nothing about, etc."

Quality control

Quality is regulated democratically at two levels. First, registered users vote to accept or reject newly submitted definitions. Definitions appear in the dictionary after receiving a sufficient differential of "accept" over "reject" votes.

Secondly, definitions already in the dictionary can be voted "up" or "down" by any site visitor. The definitions appear in descending order of highest gross votes.

However, in spite of the quality control measures at least one flaw remains: duplicate entries. The dictionary has no current wiki mechanism of merging duplicates into one record.

The problems that are caused by the duplication issue are

• unreliable reporting of the actual number of definitions (there may only be ~250,000 not 3.2 million definitions for example)
• user confusion by having to sort through all the variants (some terms have 9+ pages of definitions)
• for people used to paper dictionaries only, the interface would seem unfamiliar

Another issue is that some newly submitted definitions that are suitable for the dictionary are often rejected by registered users.

It is often unclear as to which countries use each urban term. This is due to design of the site database and interface.

Books

In October 2005 a selection of definitions from Urban Dictionary were published in book form. A second book was published in 2007.

• Urban Dictionary: Fularious Street Slang Defined (by Aaron Peckham, 320 pages, Andrews McMeel, 2005, ISBN 0740751433)
• Mo' Urban Dictionary: Ridonkulous Street Slang Defined (by Aaron Peckham, 240 pages, Andrews McMeel, 2007, ISBN 0740768751)

External links

• Urban Dictionary