Bracketology is now officially a word.
The latest update of the Oxford English Dictionary will include bracketology for the first time, according to the New York Times, with the official definition being “the activity of predicting the participating teams in a tournament (typically the N.C.A.A. basketball tournament).”
Here’s how it was determined that the word would be added:
In the case of bracketology, Ms. Martin said, an automated process that scans publications first detected the word’s use in 2002 in The Sporting News. In 2007, it was noticed in The New Yorker by a human being, a “professional reader” who combs through all manner of publications looking for new words and usages. In April 2015, a formal suggestion was made to include bracketology in the dictionary.
The first mention of Bracketology that the OED could find was in The Montgomery Advisor in 2000.
