Tag archives: Oxford English Dictionary
‘Dr. Murray, Oxford’: a remarkable Editor
Dictionaries never simply spring into being, but represent the work and research of many. Only a select few of the people who have helped create the Oxford English Dictionary, however, can lay claim to the coveted title ‘Editor’. In the first of an occasional series on the Editors of the OED, Peter Gilliver introduces the [...]
A profusion of words
Please note: several of the following links to dictionary content require subscriber access to the OED Online. The early modern period was an era of great change for the English language. According to the OED’s record, the number of words ‘available’ to speakers of English more than doubled between 1500 and 1650. Many of the new words [...]
Appointment with Words: where does Agatha Christie feature in the OED?
Tomorrow sees the anniversary of the death of Agatha Christie, a doyenne of the whodunnit, or as the celebrated humourist Ogden Nash put it, a murdermongress. In a career spanning 50 years, she wrote over 60 detective novels, as well as collections of short stories and plays. In addition, she indulged her romantic side by [...]
Who cares about English? Part 1
We at the Oxford English Dictionary recently partnered with the British Council to host a panel discussion entitled ‘Who cares about English?’ The panel was chaired by John Knagg, Head of English Research at the British Council, and consisted of: John Simpson, Chief Editor of the OED Romesh Gunesekera, Booker prize shortlisted novelist Henry Hitchings, [...]
Hip-hop on ‘ice’
This week the Oxford English Dictionary published their final quarterly update for 2012. Among the recently revised entries is the noun ice, which has got me thinking about the lyrics of “Thrift Shop”, a song by the hip-hop duo Macklemore & Ryan Lewis. Check it out: I’m just pumped, I bought some sh*t from a thrift shop. Ice [...]
The birth of disco
It was this month in 1959 when a nightclub opened its doors in the quiet city of Aachen, West Germany, and a small revolution in music took place. The Scotch-Club was similar to many restaurant-cum-dancehalls of the time, with one exception: rather than hire a live band to provide the entertainment, its owner decided instead [...]
The Lexicographer who Loved Me
What’s your favourite James Bond film? That’s a question that gets bandied about a fair bit, especially on a Friday night in the pub, once the subject of children’s TV of yesteryear has been exhausted. And what better week to posit the question than in the one when Skyfall, Bond’s 23rd cinematic outing, hits our screens? [...]
How many Chaucers does it take to change a language?
After 600 years, what do we think of when we hear the name Geoffrey Chaucer? The straightforward, factual answer – that he was the son of London wine merchant, born sometime in the 1340s, who spent his life, after youthful forays to the French wars and diplomatic missions, working as a civil servant and building up [...]
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