Tag archives: new words
Words on the radar: June 2012
Oxford Dictionaries adds dozens of new words each quarter but we have a much longer watchlist of words that we are monitoring for possible inclusion in the future. The following are some words which have recently come to our attention, but don’t yet have enough currency for us to include them in our dictionaries. Some [...]
Props to the cats – the lifespan of slang
My students are mostly white, middle-class, and female, but their slang is heavily influenced by rap culture. They chillax with their bloods and homies, dissing the skanky hos, expressing props to the players and pimping up their whips. Comparison with hippy slang suggests that it’s only a matter of time before they’re not the only [...]
Totes amazing new words added to our online dictionary – obvs
Walking around in your leopard-print onesie while proudly sporting guyliner may lead to some guffaws and eye-rolling among family and friends, but whatevs! You know you’re totes on trend. The above sentence contains just some of the new words and terms added to Oxford Dictionaries Online in our latest update which covers a whole range [...]
Time to get ill: Beastie Boys lyrics in the Oxford English Dictionary
Like many folks of my generation, upon hearing about the death of Adam Yauch, aka MCA, I’ve spent the last few weeks revisiting my Beastie Boys’ albums. At one point during my listen, I began to wonder about their lyrics and what kind of mark they’ve made on the English language. Is it possible that [...]
Tracing the birth of words: from ‘open’ to ‘heffalump’
Open for longer It is always immensely satisfying to be able to pinpoint the genuine birthday of a word in English, although there will always be some words for which this will be impossible. It can be difficult to trace exactly when a word first made its appearance on paper (and when it was used [...]
Which words came to life 100 years ago? New words in 1912 from ‘ambivalence’ to ‘jazz’
On April 15, 1912, readers of the Los Angeles Times opened their papers to the headline “The World’s Greatest Steamship Wrecked.” Less than two weeks earlier, they had read something else of historical note, at least to etymologists: the April 2 edition contained the earliest citation yet found for the word jazz. At that time, [...]
Words are wind – the language of Game of Thrones
Somehow A Song of Ice and Fire, the colossal fantasy series by George R. R. Martin, had escaped my notice until the critically acclaimed TV series hit our screens last year, prompting me to buy the first book in the series. Little did I know that a few weeks later I would spend Christmas continually [...]
Hibernating words and linguistic cicadas
Most words develop along fairly predictable paths. They may be quotidian words, such as set, which accrue new shades of meanings along the course of a very long life, and which end up with so many dozens of definitions that it is extremely difficult to see where one begins and another ends. Some words may [...]
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