The dog: man’s best friend?
The history of man’s relationship with the domesticated carnivorous mammal Canis familiaris is a long and complex one, and is reflected in the language used across the centuries to describe…
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‘digital’
In lexicography it is often easier to identify developments in the meaning and usage of a word than it is to determine their causes. The quotation evidence that we adduce…
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The AUTO- age
‘Self’ reference How readily someone may be understood when using a new word will depend on several factors: the intuitable transparency of meaning, its clarity in context, the receptiveness of…
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Personal names and the development of English
You may also be interested in Peter’s article on Surnames as sources in the OED. A short history of English personal names It is one of many linguistic consequences of…
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The rise of global English
‘Globish’ is not my word. In the best traditions of the English language, I borrowed it from a Frenchman who first coined it in 1995. Jean-Paul Nerriere was a senior…
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Surnames as sources in the OED
You may also be interested in Peter’s article on English personal names in the OED. Surnames occur in the OED for two main reasons. Many of them derive from words…
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Place names in the Oxford English Dictionary
Problems with place As any Scrabble player knows, dictionaries of English tend not to include entries for names—of people, organizations, or places. For the lexicographer names in general, and place…
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Genes and genetics: the language of scientific discovery
It is sometimes the case that a scientific field experiences such dramatic progress that the rate at which new discoveries are made outpaces the language needed to describe them. How…
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A hat, a hypnotist, and one (partially) bad egg
The Du Maurier family had several illustrious members. Daphne Du Maurier (1907-1989) is now probably the best-known, a prolific novelist whose writing inspired such films as Rebecca, Don’t Look Now,…
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Twentieth century English – an overview
At the dawn of the 20th century, English was still recognizably a single homogeneous language, albeit one with a major distinctive variety, in North America, whose speakers now outnumbered those…
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