Barbiecore and ‘spicy cough’: pop culture and the pandemic deliver updates to the Macquarie Dictionary

The ninth edition of the Macquarie Dictionary plays catch up with new words including doomscrolling, Barbiecore and Omicron. Composite: Getty Images

Situationship, Barbiecore and “spicy cough”: these are among the 3,000 new entries in the latest update to the Macquarie Dictionary.

Emphasising that dictionaries are in a constant state of playing catch up, Macquarie’s managing editor, Victoria Morgan, says a number of pandemic-era and more recent colloquial nouns have trickled into the ninth edition of Australia’s collection of vocabulary.