It seems that Microsoft has finally gotten tired of all the jokes about the word “performant” or using “ask” as a noun. Microsoft has decided to put it’s money where it’s mouth is and has announced today that they have purchased both Websters and Dictionary.com. Now why would they do something like that? Well among other things they will be adding the following entry for performant.

performant
[per-fawr-muh nt]
noun
1. A piece of code that performs well.
“That script is very performant when run on the cloud.”

And an additional entry will be added for the word ask.

noun
1. a question
“I have an ask about the cloud.”

This will certainly upset some people who have enjoyed long hours complaining that “Performant is not a real word!” and “Ask is not a noun.” Well, now they are.

Knowing Microsoft I’m sure there will be plenty of other changes, however, the most extensive I’ve heard about so far involves the example sentences for each word.

Teach
1. She teaches how to create performant code that runs on the cloud.

Library
1. The cloud has more information than a library.

Rain
1. Rain falls from the cloud.

Anyone surprised? Not me.