"Esports" is now officially in the dictionary

After years of struggle and recrimination, the long lexicographic battle is finally over: Esports, and not e-sports, has been added to the dictionary. The word, describing "competitive tournaments of video games, especially among professional gamers," was added to the lexicon at Dictionary.com earlier this week.

"We rely on research in traditional publications, as well as technology like corpus research. In our case, we are currently using a corpus that has over 19 billion words," it wrote. "The corpus contains a massive collection of sources, from literature to news articles to television and interview transcripts, balanced to reflect actual usage of language."

Other game-related terms joining the new word parade are "permadeath" (the permanent death of a defeated character, after which the player of the game cannot continue with the same character) and "completionist" (a player who attempts to complete every challenge and earn every achievement or trophy in a video game). But clearly, "esports" is the important addition this time around; sorry, hyphenators, but it's "game over" for you! (That one's not actually in the dictionary yet, but I'm hopeful for 2016.)

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.