Showing 1-10 of 118 entries
“Quarterly updates”
July 2020 update: scientific terminology of Covid-19
As we increase our understanding of the virus and its effects and potential treatments, specialist scientific and medical language is increasingly prominent in everyday discourse. The OED decided to publish another update to cover these developments.
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Using corpora to track the language of Covid-19: update 2
In the July 2020 OED update, we take a look at linguistic changes to Covid-19-related vocabulary, and describe the ways that OED lexicographers use corpora to track such changes.
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From pirates to plant-based: the OED June 2020 update
The June 2020 update to OED arrives in strange times, but if new words and new OED entries are what you’re looking for (and why else would you be here?),…
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That’s the spirit: revising ‘spirit’, n. for OED3
The OED entry for spirit, n. consists of 163 senses, phrases, compounds, and so on, making it one of the larger entries in the dictionary, but by no means the…
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Social change and linguistic change: the language of Covid-19
It is a rare experience for lexicographers to observe an exponential rise in usage of a single word in a very short period of time, and for that word to…
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A bear of many brains: the revision of bear, n.1
In the March 2020 update to the OED, our entry for bear, n.1 found itself in the paws of our revision editors. The process of taking the ‘bear’ that appeared…
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Have yourself a merry little update: the March 2020 OED release notes
Christmas has come particularly early this year, as the latest OED update includes a revision of Christmas and its near neighbours. Some of the changes are due to expressions that…
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Cartoon bears and killer clowns: new entries in the OED March 2020 update
Here at the coalface of lexicography, we OED editors often have to grapple with new words that we have no prior knowledge of whatsoever, sometimes in highly specialized fields such…
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Release notes: West African English pronunciations
The OED‘s latest update sees the addition of several Nigerian English words, including bukateria, danfo, and tokunbo . This was the perfect opportunity for OED’s pronunciation team to add a West…
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Release notes: Nigerian English
My English-speaking is rooted in a Nigerian experience and not in a British or American or Australian one. I have taken ownership of English. This is how acclaimed Nigerian writer…
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