How can you tell if a technology has made it? Sales figures, media buzz, pop culture references (like mentions in a movie or song or something), lots of different ways. Another way is when a word enters the regular lexicon, and eventually, the dictionary:

The Oxford English Dictionary added new words including “podcast” and “phishing,” saying they are now part of the English language, as it published its second edition today.

The words, which refer to music downloading and Internet fraud respectively, are part of a list of new additions that reflect the growing influence of technology on daily life. Oxford Dictionaries uses databases of words compiled from books, television programs and Internet chat rooms. There are 355,000 words in the new dictionary.

I’m still waiting for all the evidence that podcasting is just a fad. Might sound good in an article or two or three, but it doesn’t add up in real life! Not when the number of new podcasters continues to grow exponentially and the word itself makes it into the dictionary.

Read: Bloomberg