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“The language of...”
100 words that define the First World War
Discover the ways in which the events of the First World War left their mark on the English language with our interactive timeline.
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Paperback writer
As the publication date approached for the paperback version of my history of the Oxford English Dictionary – now available from all good booksellers! – I found myself, perhaps inevitably…
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Resistance is fertile: the language born of the feminist movement
Ninety years ago today, while Charles Onions and his team were raising a glass to the completion of a project that had been fifty years in the offing, women across…
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Winnie-the-Pooh in the Oxford English Dictionary
The publication of the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary in 1928 coincided with that of The House at Pooh Corner, the sequel to Winnie-the-Pooh which had appeared two…
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Release notes: the formal language of sexuality and gender identity
It is fifty years and more since the social phenomenon known as the sexual revolution began to sweep much of the western world. In the subsequent decades, the words with…
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A Christmassy lexicon
Christmas can seem less like a Christian festival than a celebration of shopping. ‘Has capitalism devoured Christmas?’ asked one British newspaper in 2015, while another, the previous year, promised an…
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The knotty story of Halloween
Halloween is an increasingly contentious occasion. Devotees claim that celebrating it is liberating and romantic — an opportunity to dress up and make merry. Yet critics complain that the festival…
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‘Kaffir’
On looking at the OED’s revised entry for Kaffir, originally a noun but later also developing adjectival uses, perhaps the most striking aspect of the picture that emerges is the…
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Shakespeare in the OED
The works of Shakespeare (1564–1616) are more widely quoted in OED than those of any other author, and they pose questions for lexicographers and bibliographers concerning date and location. Treatment…
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