Football Legend Pelé Added To Dictionary After Campaign

Football fans will be on cloud nine as Pelé, which is the late football star's nickname, has now officially been added to a dictionary that's popular in Brazil.

"Pelé" has been added as a new adjective to the online edition of the Portuguese-language Michaelis dictionary, reported BBC.

It has now become synonymous with anything that is "exceptional, incomparable, unique."

This comes after a campaign by the Pelé Foundation, which is a charitable organization created to preserve the athlete's legacy, collected over 125,000 signatures. The campaign was to honor the football star, who died last year.

He is the only footballer to win the World Cup three times, and is one of the top goal scorers in the history of the men's games, as per ESPN.

No wonder many consider him to be the best footballer in history.

His playing career lasted for two decades. During this period, he scored 1,281 goals. He was with the New York Cosmos as well as Brazilian club Santos and Brazil's national team.

He died after having some complications from colon cancer in December, and since then the Pelé Foundation along with his former club, Santos and sports channel SporTV had been trying to get his name recognized with its entry in the dictionary.

The publishers behind Michaelis dictionaries announced Wednesday that Pelé would be included in the online edition of their dictionary in Portuguese immediately. It will also appear in the printed version once the next edition gets published.

The entry reads, "pe.lé adjective. That or someone who is out of the ordinary, who or who by virtue of their quality, value or superiority cannot be equaled to anything or anyone." It says that it is just like Pelé, which is the nickname of Edson Arantes do Nascimento, who is considered the "greatest athlete of all time; exceptional, incomparable, unique."

The Pelé Foundation said that it was a fitting tribute to "the king."

It tweeted that the expression that is already used to refer to a person who is the "best at what they do has been made eternal on the pages of the dictionary!"

The campaign in the dictionary is one of the most original the Pelé Foundation has ever participated in, said Joe Fraga, executive director of the foundation. He added that the legend's name inclusion in the dictionary is a "very important piece of his legacy that will keep Pelé alive forever."