'Char Kway Teow', 'Chicken Rice' and 'Rendang' make it into the Oxford English Dictionary

'Char Kway Teow', 'Chicken Rice' and 'Rendang' are among the 500 new words, phrases, and senses recognised by the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) in its September update.

Other words acknowledged by the 150-year-old dictionary are 'Aiyah', 'Aiyoh', 'Ang Pow, 'Atas', 'Balut', 'Bodoh', 'Kopitiam', and 'Mamak'.

Those 11 words are widely used and understood by most of 29 over million multi-ethnic population in Malaysia.

'Bodoh' which means 'sukar mengerti' (slow at learning or understanding) by the Fourth Edition of Kamus Dewan, Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, was surprisingly recognised by the OED and it is referred as an adjective and a noun.

Widely regarded as the accepted authority on the English language, the dictionary is updated every three months, with the next update due in December 2016.

The OED is an unsurpassed guide to the meaning, history, and pronunciation of 600,000 words past and presentfrom across the English-speaking world.

As a historical dictionary, the OED is very different from Dictionaries of Current English, in which the focus is on present-day meanings.

The First Edition of the dictionary (1884-1928) was published in 10 and then after some rebalancing of the contents in 12 volumes.

At present the dictionary is undergoing its first thoroughgoing revision and update.

Around 70 editors, mostly in Oxford and New York, review each word in turn, examining its meaning and history, noting where meanings have changed or where old definitions no longer suffice and recraft the entries in the light of the most up-to-date information.