According to the dictionary's editors, the OED itself resembles a wiki, as it has a long tradition of working collaboratively. For over 150 years, its editorial team has welcomed the input from the public in assessing word usage and frequency.

"Especially in its current online form, which allows a much faster update time than print editions did, it can be argued that the OED's open attitude to public contribution and eagerness to incorporate the findings and knowledge of its readers into the text itself suggests an ethos not unlike that of a wiki," said Graeme Diamond, OED's principle editor of new words, in a statement.

Origin of Wiki

The editorial team first picked up the term "wiki" in 2003, from a copy of The Guardian, a national newspaper in the UK. Since then, the team tracked it via a database of new words and uses, and discovered earlier uses of the word in more specialist sources.

The inclusion in the OED shows the wiki phenomenon is steadily climbing. This week, the Walt Disney Company launched family.com, a new Web site that can be edited by visitors. Disney is among the first traditional media companies to venture into the world of wikis.

By most accounts, the wiki phenomenon was popularized with
Wikipedia, the Internet encyclopedia. Since its creation in 2001, Wikipedia has grown into one of the largest reference Web sites on the Internet, with over a million articles written by volunteers from all over the world. One of those articles, on the term "wiki" itself, offers an in-depth analysis on the history and usage of the word.