Athleisure Gets a Dictionary Definition

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Merriam-Webster Unabridged's dictionary now recognizes the term "athleisure" as a word — it's official as of a blog post today. It took years of wearing leggings to the grocery store to reach this milestone.

"The new entries offer a kind of snapshot of how exactly our language expands. It doesn’t happen quickly—we monitored many of these words for years before they’d met our criteria for entry," Merriam-Webster's blog reads.

Merriam-Webster's apparently paying close attention to the fashion industry for new words. Not only did "athleisure" make it in along with the dictionary's 1,400 new terms and phrases for 2016, other fashion terms like "fit and flare" made it in ("fit-and-flare" is also correct).

Fit and flare's definition is straightforward enough: "Fitted through the waist and flaring out at or below the hips." Then it's used in a couple of sentences about fit-and-flare dresses.

Did you know the word 'athleisure' was first used in 1976? Read the complete dictionary definition, with phonetic spelling, below.