Showing 1-6 of 6 entries tagged
“OED revision”
Working some lexicographical magic: the revision of witch
As we move from summer to autumn and Halloween appears on the horizon, it is apt that a number of the words for the latest OED Online quarterly release have…
Speed read: the revision of fast and slow
Published this quarter are the revised entries for fast and slow. Although fast and slow are antonyms the entries, and those for derived words, do not exactly mirror each other,…
The Long Tale of a Shirttail
For such an unassuming word—it’s not even a garment, just a part of one, and the bottom bit, at that—shirttail has undergone a surprising amount of semantic development. This fact…
Who can revise ‘candy’? The lexicographer can…
2020 has been a strange year, all round, and it seems odd to think that back in January I was sitting down in the office to revise the candy range,…
Switching gears: revising code-switching, n.
A few days ago, I had the following online conversation with a friend who wanted to invite me to speak in a linguistic anthropology class he was teaching: Friend: Hello…
A load of old codswallop? Revising codswallop, n.
In 2005, the Oxford English Dictionary, together with the BBC, launched the Wordhunt Project: an appeal to the public for help in finding earlier evidence for fifty words and phrases…