The Simpsons creates word that’s now officially recognised by the dictionary

The Simpsons’ influence really does know no bounds – and now they’ve created a word that is officially recognised by the dictionary.

In a new achievement that would look fab on Lisa’s permanent record, Dictionary.com has acknowledged the use of the word ’embiggens’, created by the team of the future predicting series.

Embiggens was first used in 1996 episode Lisa The Iconoclast, where young bookworm Lisa is left devastated when discovering Springfield’s town founder, Jebediah Springfield, was actually a murderous pirate.

Determined to let people know the real history of Springfield, Lisa instead ends up upsetting residents who refuse to acknowledge that their praised founder hated his people and was anything other than perfect.

During her mission, it’s revealed town’s motto is ‘a noble spirit embiggens the smallest man’, a word teacher Edna Krabappel says she ‘had never heard of before’ until she moved into town.

Miss Hoover responds: ‘I don’t know why. It’s a perfectly cromulent word.’

Cromulent, which means ‘satisfactory or normal’ was also made up by the team at the time.

Principal Skinner manages to use them both later on in the episode while talking about Homer Simpson, telling others his audition for town crier as part of the town’s bicentennial celebrations ’embiggened that role with his cromulent performance.’

Cromulent actually beat embiggened into the dictionary, appearing as part of its 21st century lexicon.

In 2018, embiggened was included in the Merriam-Webster dictionary and the online version of the Oxford English Dictionary.

Basically, it’s official – the show can now predict the future and effect the present, and with two more seasons on the way, it’s pretty much unstoppable.

The Simpsons is available on Disney Plus in the UK.

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