SHEIDLOWER’S LIST

“Yada-yada-yada” is officially a word.

Page 1,499 of the new Webster’s College Dictionary (Random House), lists it for the first time--defined simply as an adverb meaning “blah-blah-blah.”

Someone from another country might not understand that definition. But this Webster’s couldn’t care less. It’s for the etymologically hip and bills itself as the only desk dictionary with “all the important words” made current in the 1990s.

Who decides such things?

In this case it’s Jesse Sheidlower, 29, senior editor in charge of new words, and the author of a 240-page tome called “The F Word.” (Random House, 1995) That book was a historical look at the obscene four-letter verb now so commonplace that it rates a 14-line entry in the current Webster’s, along with related entries.

“All the common obscenities have been in dictionaries for a number of years and are growing less offensive with the passage of time,” Sheidlower says.

Sheidlower’s job sounds like a power trip: “I monitor the English language, and when new words arise that I think should be in the dictionary, I put them there.”

Among those he thought worthy: “killer app” (a computer program that surpasses its competitors); “applet” (a small computer application program); “V-chip”; “scrunchy” (fabric-covered elastic hair bands); “Prozac”; “stork parking” (parking slots reserved for pregnant women); “glutes” (the buttocks muscles); and the prefix “Franken,” now used “ . . . before names of foods, to mean ‘genetically engineered.’ ” As in “frankentomato,” the dictionary explains.

Frankly, we don’t use “Franken” all that much. And we’re worried Sheidlower may have euthanized some perfectly good older words in favor of some iffy new ones. He admits that “thousands of old words and phrases were tossed out,” but can’t give any examples.

He has not chosen to include “bite me,” the now-ubiquitous phrase that, in ‘90s-speak, means go to hell.

“I just wasn’t sure about that one,” he says.