OED editors are continually monitoring linguistic developments, and one way of doing this is through analysis of language corpora. Here, we summarize some recent trends, using data from our monitor corpus of English.
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Dr Seth Mehl, Digital Humanities Fellow at the University of Sheffield, on how exploring a very specific kind of lexical co-occurrence delivers fascinating new insights into large text collections.
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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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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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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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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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The availability of three new online archives made us wonder what new evidence we could uncover by returning to some of the entries which we’ve already revised…
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Over the last year, the Oxford Languages group, which is made up of the OED team alongside our other dictionary projects and teams, has been reviewing its organizational structure and…
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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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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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