It's Official: Merriam-Webster Adds Two Words to Latest English Language Dictionary -- eBay and CNet West Filabucket, NY /DenounceNewswire/ -- January 3, 2001 -- Merriam-Webster Company today announced it has added two technical terms to the English Language Dictionary: "ebay" and "cnet". The first, "ebay", named after the famous online auction site, shall have the following official definition: ebay Pronunciation: E bA Date 2000 Function: verb 1. To crash, fail, or otherwise malfunction. 2. To build a monolithic device knowing it will likely crash, fail, or otherwise malfunction 3..To lose $7 billion or more in market value in a single day 4..To develop your high-traffic web site using Microsoft products. Example usage: Did you hear about our competitor? They ebayed something fierce yesterday. Whew. That had to hurt. Function: noun 1. The act of crashing, failing, or otherwise malfunctioning. 2. A system which is prone to failure 3. A massive loss of market capitalization, as in a publicly-traded company Example usage: You better have built a solid architecture, I don't want any ebays here! "In the past year, 'to ebay' has become a commonplace term in the tech community for meaning a computer crash, especially for a commercial web site crash," said Indu Strypundit, an industry pundit. "Indeed, the motto at some dot-com engineering organizations these days goes something like this: "Otay ebay, ortay otnay otay ebay", which is Pig Latin for "built it right the first time or you deserve to lose your customers." In related news, Merriam-Webster has chosen to add the word "cnet" (pronounced cee-net) to its latest dictionary. cnet Pronunciation: C 'n&t Function: verb Date 2000 1. To gloat. 2. To point out the weaknesses of a competitor. 3..To remind of past failures while gloating about the current failure Example usage: Okay so our competitors are idiots. Stop cnetting and get back to work. Merriam-Webster noted that for each instance of an eBay website outage, the CNet news website was on top of it in a flash, reporting all of eBay's miserable details with glee, including a listing of all past outages. CNet is a competitor to eBay and runs its own CNet branded auction service. Return to DENOUNCE Home Page Copyright © 1996-2003 Birdrock Ventures. Denounce is a satire website specializing in false press releases that are meant to neither inform nor educate. All Rights Reserved. No redistribution or copying without written permission from Denounce.com. DENOUNCE is a trademark of Birdrock Ventures.