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“Quarterly updates”

Naturalization and Indian English
“I had some lovely andouillette /ˌɒndwɪˈɛt/,” said Charlie.“You mean /ɑ̃dujɛt/,” replied Sam. Do you side with Charlie or Sam? English dictionaries have wrestled for over 100 years with how to…
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Football in the Historical Thesaurus of the OED
In September we published a football-themed batch of new words in preparation for the World Cup (see OED September 2022 release notes). This batch contained plenty of exotic-sounding and highly…
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Comic Strips and the OED
When revising an OED entry, our chief concern is that the quotations reflect the reality of current and historical usage: we include the earliest example of a word, sense, or…
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So, it’s the OED update, obvs
‘So, it’s time for the latest update to OED, including lots of new words and senses.’ ‘You’d better be doing that because the update includes the use of so at…
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Toppers, pipperoos, and rumptydoolers: ‘excellent’ words in the Historical Thesaurus of the OED
In a recent blog post on the Historical Thesaurus of the OED (HTOED), we noted that one of the categories which has expanded significantly in recent years is excellent. To…
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Shock! Horror! It’s a shaggy dog story.
The September OED release includes revised entries for SHOCK and related words. An intriguing group of words for dogs, dating back to the early modern period, is included in this…
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Cabinet reshuffle: from furniture to politics in a single OED entry
Working on the OED is a constant education. Not only are you exposed to words and ideas from fields far beyond your own, but even everyday terms and expressions can…
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OED September 2022 release notes: New Words
This quarterly update for the OED is top banana, no doubt about it. As usual, new entries have been created as part of our wide-ranging revision process, and we’ll talk…
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Release notes: East African English
Recent OED updates have included a significant number of new entries from South Africa and Nigeria. In this quarterly update, the OED continues to broaden its coverage of words from…
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From Pythagoreans to soysages: words relating to vegetarianism and veganism in the Historical Thesaurus of the OED
As we were updating the entries soy and soya this quarter, we took the opportunity to review our coverage of words for vegetarian and vegan foods and diets in the…
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