Thirteen years have passed since the last edition of the Dictionary of the Spanish language (DRAE) of the Royal Spanish Academy, the first thirteen years of the 21st century. A century in which there has been an astonishing innovation and acceleration in many aspects of life, largely due to information technology and communications.

Without going into the changes in the definitions of some words (such as 'adultery', 'nationalism', 'marriage', 'pelotazo', 'sustainable', 'Trojan', etc.), changes that can be much more revolutionary and debatable than the introduction of this or that foreign word, the crop of new words in this edition is abundant. And the academies try very hard before opening their pages to a neologism.
If we look at the new words that appear in the DRAE, we will see that lexical innovation goes hand in hand with social innovation. The X-ray that the new official dictionary makes of language gives us a fairly accurate diagnosis of today's culture or, to put it with Vargas Llosa, of "the civilization of the spectacle".

As was to be expected, the booming material progress is amply represented. Neologisms abound to designate instruments, techniques and computer applications that the new technologies have made available to millions of people around the world. There are 'blog', 'chat', 'tuit' and derivatives ('bloguero', 'chatear', 'tuitear', 'tuiteo' and 'tuitero'); the noun 'internet', with a lower case, or the adjective 'hipertextual', without forgetting names like 'aerogenerator', 'dron', 'flap', 'nanotechnology', 'portahelicópteros' and 'portamisiles', 'videovigilancia'.

The academies, notaries after all of the real use of language by speakers, have no choice but to continue admitting those skeletons of words that we call acronyms, and that are, however, so practical and economical to baptize technological inventions and their applications: ABS, ADSL, USB, GPS, SMS. But it is not only in these areas that acronyms are on the rise. We also use them to designate less technical matters, such as National Identity Card, NIF (Taxpayer Identification Number), or an NGO, not to mention those that have become common words that we write with lowercase letters, such as 'cederrón', 'led', 'ovni', 'pin', 'sida', some of them already registered in the previous edition of the DRAE; or with derivatives of acronyms such as 'sidoso', 'ugetista' or 'pepero'.

There are also numerous neologisms in the field of food, one of the few issues that continue to generate consensus today. Apart from the vulgarisms 'papear' and 'papeo', with a long life in the suburbs of language, or the English adaptations of 'vegan' and 'veganism', related to the attitude of rejecting food or articles of animal origin, the DRAE has opened its doors to words such as 'broccoli', 'carbonara' (carbonara noodles), 'chopito', 'sauerkraut', 'confit', 'crocanti', 'sushi' or 'tofu'.

The world of sports has left voices related to sports practices such as 'aerobismo' (more typical of America), 'barranquismo', 'cicloturismo' and 'cicloturista', 'futbito'. And others linked to sports such as 'anti-doping', 'midfielder', 'mele', 'orsay', 'paradón', 'pichichi', 'plusmarca', 'referee' or 'sparring'. And as regards 'entertainment' (a word, by the way, in need of a new meaning in the DRAE), entrance is given to words such as 'fanzine', the adjectives 'jazzista' and 'jazzístico', 'manga' (comic of Japanese origin), 'miniseries', 'rap' and 'rapper', 'rocanrolero', 'sudoku' and the verb 'zapear'. The presence of words related to diseases, especially phobias and addictions ('amaxophobia', 'pharmacodependence', the adjectives 'bulimic' and 'obsessive-compulsive'), the colloquial shortening 'neura', or the introduction of the suffix -'mania', so useful to baptize obsessive impulses or pathological habits. And in relation to medicine, 'adenovirus', 'anticoagulant', 'anti-AIDS', 'endorphin', 'mercurochrome', or adaptations from English such as 'baipas' or 'estent' enter the DRAE. To what we could call ways of life or (counter)cultural fashions make reference letter words like 'camp', 'friki', 'jipismo', 'malditismo', 'okupa' and 'okupar' (thus, with k), 'paganini', 'pasotismo', 'psicodelia', 'punki' ('punk' was already in the previous edition, although in italics; now it is written in round).

Ideological currents have also left sediments in the DRAE. The prefix 'anti' has given rise to formations such as 'anti-war', 'anti-Europeanism' and 'anti-Europeanist', 'Euroskepticism' and, of course, 'anti-American', 'anti-Western', 'anti-system'. The adjectives 'multiethnic' and 'multiracial', as well as the words 'mundialization' and 'mundialize', find now a place next to 'globalization' and 'globalize', the latter two already present in the previous edition. Also related to political or religious movements or ideologies are words such as 'islamization', 'pan-Arabism', 'Sunni' or 'Sunni', 'jihad'; 'rojerío', 'rojillo' or 'sociata', 'ultra-right' and 'ultra-left'. The terms 'ayatollah' or 'Taliban' were already included in the 2001 edition. But words such as 'sharia' 'Islamic law', 'sheik' 'Arab leader' or 'shoah' 'holocaust, Jewish annihilation by Nazi Germany', so frequently used, are still missing. And in vain will we look up 'ebola'. And a printed dictionary gets old before it comes out. The future belongs to the digital edition. Are we facing the last printed edition of the DRAE?