Old words, new words, EU words: Brexit and the OED
The noun Brexit entered the Oxford English Dictionary in December 2016. It was then still a very recent word by the standards of a historical dictionary, coined in just 2012,…
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Words from the 21st century
In the twenty-first century, at the dawn of the Anthropocene (2000) era, the human race began to abandon analogue socializing for the seductive delights of the digital ether. The twitterati’s…
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A look back on our 90th anniversary celebrations
With the ink freshly dried on the final pages of the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, an extraordinary mission begun over 60 years prior to compile a comprehensive…
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Words from the 1990s
It was the decade of all things cyber-: cybercrime, cybersex, cybershoppers, cyberwar. The main fear in the cybercafé was the dreaded millennium bug, which threatened to make the world’s computer systems crash when the clocks chimed midnight on 31 December 1999.
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In conversation with Desmond Morris – part one
The Oxford English Dictionary is not the only one with a 90th birthday to celebrate this past year – Desmond Morris, the renowned zoologist and author of The Naked Ape,…
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In conversation with Desmond Morris – part two
The Oxford English Dictionary is not the only one with a 90th birthday to celebrate this past year – Desmond Morris, the renowned zoologist and author of The Naked Ape,…
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Words from the 1980s
The habits of post-war austerity had begun to chafe in the 1960s. The economic shocks of the 1970s did little to permit the loosening of shackles, but in the 1980s…
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What do ‘dungarees’ mean to you? Crowdsourcing an answer from Twitter
In revising one entry for a recent update, one of our editors decided to put Twitter to a different lexicographical use
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The art of reading for the OED: John Birchall
In ‘the art of reading for the OED’, John Birchall explains what makes a good reader and how seventeenth-century prose introduced him to new perspectives.
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Dope and sex and rock ‘n’ roll: slang lexicography with Jonathon Green (part two)
In celebration of the 90th anniversary of the OED’s completed First Edition, slang specialist and lexicographer Jonathon Green sat down with Henry Hitchings, a Consultant Editor for the OED, to…
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