Dictionaries and lexicography
Hella ridic new words to make you lolz: ODO August 2012 update
If vocabulary is your guilty pleasure, join us in a group hug to celebrate the selection of new words to Oxford Dictionaries Online. Genius! Let’s set the scene. Your OH has left his brahs and decided it’s date night, and although he isn’t exactly ripped he’s made an effort with his new soul patch (lolz!) [...]
The linguistic legacy of the Master of Suspense
Sir Alfred Hitchcock was born on August 13 in 1899. His contribution to cinema is without question. You don’t have terms like Master of Suspense bandied around about you if you weren’t rather handy in the director’s chair. His films have thrilled audiences for decades – we’ve marvelled at his icy blondes, cheered on his [...]
Writing for grown-up people: George Eliot and the Oxford English Dictionary
In celebration of Book Lover’s Day, we asked four of our dictionary editors to tell us about their favourite writers. Each of the writers featured is in the top 1000 cited sources in the Oxford English Dictionary. If you subscribe to the OED Online (many UK libraries offer free access if you provide your library [...]
Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse, and the Oxford English Dictionary
In celebration of Book Lover’s Day, we asked four of our dictionary editors to tell us about their favourite writers. Each of the writers featured is in the top 1000 cited sources in the Oxford English Dictionary. If you subscribe to the OED Online (many UK libraries offer free access if you provide your library [...]
Sir Thomas Browne and the Oxford English Dictionary
In celebration of Book Lover’s Day, we asked four of our dictionary editors to tell us about their favourite writers. Each of the writers featured is in the top 1000 cited sources in the Oxford English Dictionary. If you subscribe to the OED Online (many UK libraries offer free access if you provide your library [...]
Aldous Huxley and the Oxford English Dictionary
In celebration of Book Lover’s Day, we asked four of our dictionary editors to tell us about their favourite writers. Each of the writers featured is in the top 1000 cited sources in the Oxford English Dictionary. If you subscribe to the OED Online (many UK libraries offer free access if you provide your library [...]
Grexit, Spanic, and clown: July 2012 on the radar
Each month we reflect on some of the new words Oxford’s lexicography team has been tracking—words that are being used in English but are not yet sufficiently established for inclusion in our dictionaries. Would-be words of the eurozone crisis The Eurozone economic crisis which has dominated headlines this summer has yielded a bumper crop of [...]
Pedal or peddle?
English spelling is full of apparent idiosyncrasies – native speakers and learners alike grapple with doubling consonants, how to form plurals, ‘i’ before ‘e’ except after ‘c’’, and have to dodge umpteen other potential pitfalls. Another rich source of mistakes is the fact that English contains pairs of similar-sounding words (homophones). These words have different [...]
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