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“Quarterly updates”
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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It’s time to kvell about some awesomesauce new words: the OED January 2020 update
The January 2020 update to the Oxford English Dictionary is now online, and OED lexicographers having rubbed their minds together are ready to share the latest contributions to their work…
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These ARE the words you are looking for: the OED October 2019 update
From ‘fake news’ to ‘Jedi mind trick’, let us ‘loop you in’ with the latest OED update:
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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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