The Full Monty: Sheffield steel workers strip

The dictionary's editors have spent the year trawling through popular culture for words that have become popular.

"My job is the perfect excuse for watching action films, soaps, quiz programmes - where the language is busy right now," said chief editor John Simpson.

Bad hair day

The new terms were drawn from sources from teenage slang to pop music to Bridget Jones's Diary.

Helen Fielding's novel and the subsequent film may have inspired a generation of women but it is also having an effect on English.

"Bad hair day" is an expression that has been around for years, but it was the chardonnay-swilling Bridget's use of the phrase that caused it to be included.

Another new entry is the term "boy band", which many associate with the early 1990s and the heady days of Take That.

But the term has been around since mid 1980s.

Bridget Jones's Diary author Helen Fielding

The dictionary also includes clubbing and clubbers.

Both those words were first recorded in the Guardian in an article from 9 July 1966.

Back then they might have danced to Sunny Afternoon by The Kinks, which was that week's number one in the UK pop charts.

And the "docusoap" has arrived - appearing for the first time in the dictionary, perhaps some time after the TV craze reached its peak.

The Oxford English Dictionary launched its online service just over a year ago and the international fascination with the English language has proved lucrative.

Subscribers range from Scandinavia to South Africa, from the US to New Zealand.