And finally…fintech finally enters the dictionary

The portmanteau of financial technology was one of 840 new entries recently added to the online dictionary.

Merriam-Webster defines fintech as “products and companies that employ newly developed digital and online technologies in the banking and financial services industries”.

While the word has a long history, which the the dictionary itself traces back to its first known use to 1971, Merriam-Webster’s popularity ranking still has it in the bottom 10 per cent of words by usage.

However, this may change as it becomes more and more popular on the back of the 21st century’s exploding fintech scene in places such as Silicon Valley and London and the rise of mobile banking, cryptocurrencies and the like.

As Merriam-Webster states: “It’s important to remember that new words are added to the dictionary only when they have already been used by many people—often initially by specialists or subcultures.

“Then, gradually, a word’s use spreads to the rest of us. Every word moves at its own pace; there is no average speed for a word’s acceptance into the language, the culture, and the dictionary. The dictionary’s job is to report that usage as it enters the general vocabulary.”