Tag archives: slang
“Does ‘all of’ have any legit uses?” A reflection by David Foster Wallace from the Oxford American Writer’s Thesaurus
Other than as an ironic idiom for ‘no more than’ (e.g., sex with Edgar lasts all of twenty seconds), does all of have any legit uses? The answer is a qualified, complicated, and personally embarrassed yes. Here’s the story. An irksome habit of many student writers is to just automatically stick an of between all [...]
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. [...]
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 [...]
Ballin’ for real: What’s the OED say about hip-hop’s ‘baller’?
The other day I had an earworm stuck in my head, an old rap song which goes: Wanna be a baller, shot-caller, 20-inch blades on the Impala… [N.B. 20-inch blades are wheels, and the Impala is a type of car] After mouthing that line to myself for a few hours, it occurred to me that [...]
From ‘gadzooks’ to ‘cowabunga’: some episodes in the life of the interjection
OMG, LOL! When the Oxford English Dictionary decided to include the interjections LOL and OMG as new words in 2011, it seemed as though the apocalypse had finally come. From the tone of so many newspaper commentaries and angry blogs reacting to the news, I might have expected to have seen a few senior editors [...]
Don’t get honey-fuggled, you doughnut! And other inventive uses of food in English
A few Fridays ago, it was National Doughnut Day. Did you celebrate or did it completely pass you by in the way that most of these days probably do? At least with this particular festivity, there would appear to be an appropriate way to celebrate. The same might not be said for, say, National Stapler [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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)
