English in use
Newspapers and briefcases: vestigial words in today’s English
Read all about it… Recent events in the UK involving the News of the World Sunday newspaper have prompted a great deal of discussion and turmoil regarding what is and is not the proper role of a newspaper in society. In particular, allegations of phone hacking have drawn great scrutiny and, as a result of [...]
What’s in a name…
The most eagerly awaited celebrity birth since, oh well, the last one, has finally happened and congratulations go to David and Victoria Beckham on the birth of Harper Seven. Ever since the pregnancy was announced, speculation has been rife as to what name would be bestowed upon their fourth child. And now we know (and [...]
‘Hacker’ is a badge of honour where I come from
A trait that is common to logophiles everywhere is the linguistic pet peeve: a word or phrase that sets our teeth on edge when we encounter it. A colleague of mine cringes whenever she hears someone refer to an initialism as an acronym, for example. Pet peeves One of my pet peeves relates to my [...]
Why we love to hate ‘liaise’
Everyone has a list of words that set their teeth on edge. Some appear on more lists than others. Liaiseis a prime example – a word that attracts a passionate linguistic hatred that does not match its meaning or length. Why is this? Liaise looks pleasant enough, and is downright euphonious once you wrap your [...]
Summertime: socks, sandals, and strawberries
As those of us in the Northern Hemisphere are enjoying our summer, thoughts inevitably turn to those things we associate most strongly with Britain in that particular season. Strawberries and cream Of all the quintessential features of a British summer perhaps the most linguistically English of them all is the strawberry. Croquet and socks Croquet [...]
Let’s just “call a cat a cat”
Just a few weeks ago Christine Lindberg explored phrases and idioms that revealed the somewhat surprising way in which the English language describes man’s best friend. But what about that equally popular household pet – the beloved, fluffy, crazy cat? (Those three adjectives are among some of the most popular in the English language to [...]
Unspellable words? Impossible!
Oscar Wilde’s phrase ‘the unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable’ points us to the un- words, an unexhausted yet unassuming and unexplored group of words which stand as a challenge to Napoleon. The Emperor once said ‘the word impossible is not in my dictionary’. Dictionaries have got a lot better since Napoleon’s day and impossible [...]
Anyone for tennis?
We are now well and truly into the first week of Wimbledon, the third Grand Slam event of the tennis calendar, and provided the weather holds, a feast of tennis beckons, with a plentiful supply of the traditional strawberries and cream of course. Keeping it real The modern game has its origins in real tennis, a [...]
Blog categories
- Competitions and quizzes (26)
- Dictionaries and lexicography (116)
- English in use (304)
- Grammar and writing help (58)
- Interactive features (46)
- OED Appeals (4)
- Other languages (50)
- Varieties of English (28)
- Word origins (156)
- Word trends and new words (93)
![Who's confident [confidant?] about using -ance, -ence, and](http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/wpcms/wp-content/uploads/ant-ent-60x60.jpg "Who's confident [confidant?] about using -ance, -ence, and")
