Tag archives: social media
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 [...]
What do you call a librarian on Tumblr?
There is nothing, it seems, that the Internet loves so much as . . . well, cats falling off draining boards, but second to that, it’s abbreviations. As technology and social media expand, and communities continue to grow across the Internet, so language and language use develop and adapt to cater to new situations. From [...]
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 [...]
Presidential: what can we learn about Mitt Romney and Barack Obama from their debate transcripts?
On September 26, 1960, over 60 million viewers tuned in to watch John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon take the stage for the first televised debate ever between the presidential nominees of the two major US political parties. The contrast the audience perceived that evening between a sickly and tired Nixon and a rested [...]
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!) [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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")
