Tag archives: new words
Facebook: a language
Today is Mark Zuckerberg’s 29th birthday – yes, the co-founder and CEO of Facebook is still under thirty. Facebook turned nine this February, which is surprisingly young given its influence upon the English language. It is my part-time addiction to Facebook, and not, I hasten to add, my degree in English, that has qualified me [...]
Surfing the Information Superhighway: the changing face of Internet language
It’s common to associate the Internet with all things modern and new, and so it’s perhaps unexpected that it can be considered to be nearly half a century old; the ‘symbolic birth date’ of the Internet has been declared 7 April 1969, the date of publication of the first RFC (Request for Comments) document. Much [...]
Braggadocious? Never. Just excited about the Oxford Dictionaries February 2013 update!
“Having a mare of a week? With hump day over, the weekend is in sight and it’s time to start thinking about getting blootered on appletinis! Or do you prefer to put on your schlumpy clothes and curl up with a tray bake? My tortie has a more tweetable Friday night than that. But you [...]
Grab your bezzie and get ready for deets of the ODO November 2012 update!
If you’re as twitterpated by dictionaries as we are, you’ll want to be the first to hear about some of the words going into Oxford Dictionaries Online this quarter. Whatever they may be, they certainly aren’t hacky – and you might even find them useful in some situations, for example. . . With the boyf [...]
Takei-tastic word-shenaniganza
The actor George Takei, hailed as a social media superstar, recently invited his fans to invent new words and submit them to him with their proposed definitions. Here at Oxford Dictionaries we’re always monitoring new words and meanings for inclusion in our dictionaries: once a word or phrase has gained enough traction, and we’ve recorded [...]
Jack and the Flagpole: what do you call the British national flag?
Travelling around Britain, as I’ve been doing this week, I have been struck, as anyone would be, by the profusion of national flags. Not only are they to be found draped on cars and pinned in bedroom windows this year, the British flag is also being displayed on civic flagpoles, high-street lamp-posts, and pub-signs, and [...]
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!) [...]
Ghost like Swayze: a bit of hip-hop slang
As we rolled on, I seen the patrol on creep, so we got ghost. —“Alwayz into Somethin’” , from N.W.A.’s Efil4zaggin (1991) For me, this lyric represents one of the great potentials of hip-hop. An otherwise unremarkable sentiment, when channelled through the mind and mouth of a deft MC, can become something poetic and memorable. [...]
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