Showing 1-10 of 86 entries
“Quarterly updates”
No tears of joy (yet): emoji make their OED debut
This month’s update marked a small but colourful milestone in Oxford lexicographers’ use of social media as a source for illustrative quotations.
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Gym bunnies and junkyard dogs: new words in the June 2019 update
Genuinely ‘new’ words, unique character strings created by a particular individual for a specific purpose, don’t usually pass into common usage, or get into dictionaries. Those that do make it…
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Stand up for bastards! Notes on ‘bastard’ in the June 2019 update
In my first year of secondary school, my classmates and I were delighted to find that one of the drawers in the school’s workshop was labelled ‘bastard files’. As far…
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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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Fantoosh sitooteries and more: new Scottish entries in the March 2019 update
Submissions to 2017’s Free the Word appeal continue to be a great source of regional words and senses for the OED. The March release includes a number of newly-added Scottish…
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Caucus: a cant word of the Americans in the March 2019 update
There are perhaps few political terms more idiosyncratically American than caucus. In 1818, the English writer Sydney Smith referred to it as ‘the cant word of the Americans for the…
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Appeals update: March 2019
Appeals to you: #wordswhereyouare and #hobbywords Last year saw the ninetieth anniversary of the completion of the first edition of the OED, and as part of the celebration we’ve been…
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New Words in the OED: March 2019
Welcome to the March update to the OED, which contains no fewer than 650 new words, phrases, and senses. Each new and revised entry has been painstakingly researched, and at no…
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December 2018 update: taffety tarts enter the OED
This month taffety tarts join the OED’s wordlist for the first time. Defined by the dictionary as ‘a sweet tart consisting of thin pastry filled with slices of apple or…
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South African additions to the OED
South Africa is known as the Rainbow Nation, a name that celebrates the modern country’s acceptance of and pride in its multi-ethnic and multicultural identity. This diversity of cultures, traditions,…
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