Showing 1-10 of 160 entries
“Quarterly updates”
Words from the land of the long white cloud: New Zealand English additions to the OED
In its latest update, the OED is putting the spotlight on the country that its first inhabitants, the Māori people, originally called Aotearoa—the land of the long white cloud—as the…
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New Zealand English Transcription Model
In the late 19th century, James Murray’s inclusion of transcriptions in A New English Dictionary embedded the descriptivist stance that OED’s pronunciations editors emulate and hold dear today. Pronunciations were…
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‘A man-like virago of a stout and noble spirit’
In her memoir Single Journey Only, Ursula Owen, one of the founding directors of Virago Press, describes the feelings evoked by the name of the new feminist publishing venture: It’s…
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History of GROOM
The distinction between noun and verb is one of the most fundamental features of human language, and this is reflected in the OED’s organizational principles. The process whereby one part…
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When is cheddar not just cheese? In the OED update of course!
Readers may be pleased to hear that an entry for antigram is being published in the OED for the first time. For those not familiar, an antigram is an anagram…
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Naturalization and Indian English
Read about our Indian English in the Oxford English Dictionary FAQs “I had some lovely andouillette /ˌɒndwɪˈɛt/,” said Charlie.“You mean /ɑ̃dujɛt/,” replied Sam. Do you side with Charlie or Sam?…
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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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