#oxfordenglishdictionary — Public Fediverse posts

Associated Press: Oxford English Dictionary adds several words long used in the Caribbean and Bermuda. “More than a dozen words long used in Bermuda and across the Caribbean got an official nod on Wednesday from the Oxford English Dictionary. First in line is ‘bimpert,’ a Bermudian word of unknown origin that is used to describe a stupid or foolish person.”

Oxford English Dictionary Adds a New Insult – Newser

Oxford English Dictionary Adds a New Insult  NewserWords long used in the Caribbean and Bermuda are now part of…
#NewsBeep #News #Headlines #OxfordEnglishDictionary #words #World
https://www.newsbeep.com/743561/

https://www.europesays.com/3268922/ Oxford English Dictionary Adds a New Insult – Newser #News #OxfordEnglishDictionary #words #world #WorldNews #WorldTopics

https://www.europesays.com/3100092/ ‘Elbows up’ is now part of the Oxford English Dictionary #business #elbows #GordieHowe #OxfordEnglishDictionary #OxfordUniversityPress #PresidentDonaldTrump #tariffs #TradeWar

https://www.europesays.com/2712055/ Language Matters | Senpai, bingsu, ramyeon: new Korean and Japanese words in the Oxford English Dictionary #Ajumma #Anime #Bingsu #entries #Haenyeo #hallyu #japan #JejuIsland #KDrama #KFood #korea #KoreanBarbeque #manga #Mottainai #new #OED #OxfordEnglishDictionary #Senpai #Sunbae #Yokai

The OED contains close to 540 megabytes of text and tagging information. (e g) #Byte #ByteMagazine #OxfordEnglishDictionary #Anno1989

Peter Gilliver, who I had the brief pleasure of working with for about a year at the #OED, has set up this site for his writings about the history of the #OxfordEnglishDictionary and the people, who helped create it. Worth a read!

https://themakersoftheoed.wordpress.com/

#Lexicography #PeterGilliver #Dictionaries #JamesMurray

(2/2)
Aaaaber dann war ich gestern mit der Kollegin im Keller des @ids_mannheim und habe dort ganz echte Belegzettel gesehen!!!! 🤩 Alles war so wie im Buch beschrieben. Regale über Regale voll mit Fächern und Kästchen und diese voll mit unendlich vielen Zetteln... allein für Geld gab es 6 Fächer oder so! 🤩
Das war schon ein Praktikumshighlight und ich bin grad mal 2 Wochen hier. 💛

#Praktikum #OxfordEnglishDictionary #UmschulungFaMI #MeinLangerWegInDieBibliothek #Lexikographie

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Apropos Wörterbuch, apropos Oxford Dictionary. Ich lese gerade "Die Sammlerin der verlorenen Wörter" von Pip Williams. Ein bisher sehr tolles Buch!
Eine große Rolle in der Geschichte spielen Belegzettel, die für das Oxford English Dictionary gesammelt werden. Die werden im Buch gut beschrieben, sodass ich eine Vorstellung hatte, auch wenn ich noch nie einen irl gesehen hatte.

#OxfordEnglishDictionary #PipWilliams #Praktikum #UmschulungFaMI #MeinLangerWegInDieBibliothek #Lexikographie

Das Wort des Tages vom Oxford English Dictionary ist boop. 👉🏼👃🏼

"A gentle tap or touch, esp. on a person or animal's nose, usually with one's finger, and typically as a gesture of affection."

https://www.oed.com/dictionary/boop_n2

#WordOfTheDay #WortDesTages #OxfordEnglishDictionary #Wörterbuchspaß #Wörterbuchliebe

The origins of ‘say “uncle”’

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/57984/why-do-we-say-uncle

#OED #OxfordEnglishDictionary #linguistics #etymology #lexicography

Pinoys’ views on Oxford English Dictionary inclusion of ‘gigil’ in word list

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://interaksyon.philstar.com/trends-spotlights/2025/04/03/294365/pinoys-oxford-english-dictionary-gigil-word-list/

Good to see Northern England getting more explicit recognition from the OED.

I was also delighted to be reminded of the existence of the word "apeth", which I have not heard in speech for decades, and to learn of its etymology; as a child, I thought it had something to do with apes!

#English #NorthernEngland #EnglishPronunciation #Apeth #OED #Dictionaries #OxfordEnglishDictionary

https://www.oed.com/discover/pronunciations-from-northern-england/?tl=true

@neve
Is there a word I always misspell on the first try?

I mostly spell without thinking about it. I touch type, and my entree into writing was as a proofreader. I trained as a copyeditor pretty quickly after that. Lot of looking up word usages and spellings from back when we still worked on paper manuscripts . . . I still have the Shorter Oxford. Hardback.

#Writephant #languages #words #WritingCommunity #amwriting #writersofmastodon #OxfordEnglishDictionary #shorterOxford

English words of the year 2024

It’s something of a tradition here on the Grammaticus blog to start the New Year with a lexicographical recap of the previous year. If you’ve missed it in the news, here’s an overview of the words that marked the year 2024, chosen by the leading dictionary publishers from the English-speaking world.

The Collins Word of the Year 2024 was “brat.” Its standard meaning – a badly behaving child – has been recently updated to reflect its current usage as an adjective: “characterized by a confident, independent, and hedonistic attitude.” The publisher has referred to the album titled Brat by Charli XCX as a major influence: “More than a hugely successful album, ‘brat’ is a cultural phenomenon that has resonated with people globally, and ‘brat summer’ established itself as an aesthetic and a way of life.”

Other words shortlisted by Collins were: 

• brainrot (noun): “an inability to think clearly caused by excessive consumption of low-quality online content”
• era (noun): “a period of one’s life or career that is of a distinctive character”
• looksmaxxing (noun): “attempting to maximize the attractiveness of one’s physical appearance”
• rawdogging (noun): “the act of undertaking an activity without preparation, support, or equipment”
• anti-tourism (noun): “opposition to or action against large-scale tourism”
• delulu (adjective): “utterly mistaken or unrealistic in one’s ideas or expectations”
• romantasy (noun): “a literary genre that combines romantic fiction with fantasy”
• supermajority (noun): “a large majority in a legislative assembly that enables a government to pass laws without effective scrutiny”
• yapping (noun): “talking at length, especially about inconsequential matters”

Dictionary.com had some of the same words on their shortlist, as you’ll see below, but their final choice was the adjective “demure.” This word saw an explosive, overnight rise in usage in 2024, largely thanks to a series of TikTok posts by Jools Lebron (you know the ones – “very demure, very mindful”). Similar to “brat”, this word has also somewhat changed its meaning thanks to the social media: originally meaning “reserved, quiet and modest”, it has comes to refer to “refined and sophisticated appearance or behavior in various contexts.”

Here are the other words Dictionary.com had on their radar:

• brainrot (noun): “the effects of spending too much time consuming low-quality content on social media”
• brat (noun): “confidently rebellious, unapologetically bold, and playfully defiant”
• extreme weather (noun): “a period of weather or a weather event that is severe and unexpected or abnormal for the location or season in which it occurs”
• Midwest nice (adjective): “a courteous and agreeable manner, often involving self-deprecation, politeness, and avoidance of conflict”
• weird (adjective): “strange, odd, bizarre”

Based on the number of lookups, the Merriam-Webster lexicographers chose the word “polarization,” and it isn’t difficult to see why. The year 2024 was the election year in the U.S., and the word got to be used in the media and the general public even more than usual. Polarization is defined as “division into two sharply distinct opposites; especially, a state in which the opinions, beliefs, or interests of a group or society no longer range along a continuum but become concentrated at opposing extremes.”

“Weird” and “demure” were also shortlisted by Merriam-Webster, along with the following words:

• totality (noun), in reference to the Moon: “the phase of an eclipse during which it is total; the state of total eclipse”
• fortnight(noun): “a period of 14 days; two weeks” – Taylor Swift fans will know why the word was so popular in 2024
• pander(verb): “to say, do, or provide what someone wants or demands even though it is not proper, good, or reasonable)
• resonate (verb): “to affect or appeal to someone in a personal or emotional way”
• allision (noun): “the act or an instance of a ship striking a stationary object”
• cognitive (adjective): “of, relating to, being, or involving conscious intellectual activity (such as thinking, reasoning, or remembering)”
• democracy (noun): “government by the people : rule of the majority”

Saving the Oxford English Dictionary for last, because their word of the year matches my personal choice. It’s “brain rot”, defined as follows: “Supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as a result of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging. Also: something characterized as likely to lead to such deterioration.” I don’t know about you, but I strongly feel there’s no word that describes the previous year better than that one.

Here’s the rest of the OED shortlist:

• demure (adjective): “of a person: reserved or restrained in appearance or behaviour. Of clothing: not showy, ostentatious, or overly revealing”
• dynamic pricing (noun): “the practice of varying the price for a product or service to reflect changing market conditions; in particular, the charge of a higher price at a time of greater demand”
• lore(noun): “a body of (supposed) facts, background information, and anecdotes relating to someone or something, regarded as knowledge required for full understanding or informed discussion of the subject in question”
• romantasy(noun): a genre of fiction combining elements of romantic fiction and fantasy, typically featuring themes of magic, the supernatural, or adventure, alongside a central romantic storyline”
• slop(noun): “art, writing, or other content generated using artificial intelligence, shared and distributed online in an indiscriminate or intrusive way, and characterized as being of low quality, inauthentic or inaccurate”

You can visit the OED Word of the Year 2024 web page, and read very interesting summaries on the origin of each of these words, along with short explanations as to how and why these particular words were shortlisted.

What’s your personal Word of the Year 2024? Tell us about it in the comments section below!

NOTES

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COVER IMAGE CREDIT

Felicia Montenegro via Unsplash

Såg efter tips från @wizvii "The Professor and The Madman" - mkt bra! Om hur Oxford English Dictionary uppstod bl a, även om psykvård slutet av 1800-talet

https://www.svtplay.se/video/eXY7E9k/the-professor-and-the-madman

#filmtips #oed #OxfordEnglishDictionary

From A (Archeologist) to Z (Zealots): Sarah Ogilvie's "The Dictionary People" covers in 26 chapters (1 for each letter of the alphabet) the "unsung heroes" who created the #OxfordEnglishDictionary - incl. a cannibal, New Zealanders, murderers, queer folk, women & #CharlotteYonge

#VictorianStudies

Now seems like a good time to share this article. Singular ‘they’ has been around since 1375, but some browser developer thinks it's too ‘political’.

https://www.oed.com/discover/a-brief-history-of-singular-they/?tl=true

#Ladybird #LadybirdBrowser #SingularThey #OED #OxfordEnglishDictionary

This is the third day I've been woken up to the sounds of construction crews replacing the sidewalk they poured the day before.

Pretty sure this is insanity, right?

#funny #venting #meme #OxfordEnglishDictionary #wordsmithing

A #review of the #book "The Dictionary People" by Sarah Ogilvie, on the volunteers in the #crowdsourcing for compiling the first #OxfordEnglishDictionary:

"Words With Friends", Commonweal (https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/skinner-oxford-english-dictionary-Ogilvie).

#OED #Dictionary #English #BookReview #Oxford #Language

My brilliant colleague Peter Gilliver has created a site collecting his writings about the people who created the Oxford English Dictionary: https://themakersoftheoed.wordpress.com/

Please spread the (ahem) word!

#OxfordEnglishDictionary #history #lexicography #oed #biography #words #Oxford

“What Is Left Unsaid: How Some Words Do—Or Don’t—Make It Into Print” [2023], LitHub (https://lithub.com/what-is-left-unsaid-how-some-words-do-or-dont-make-it-into-print/).

#Dictionary #OxfordEnglishDictionary #OED #Language #English #Slang #Words #Lexicon

This is very cool. The #OxfordEnglishDictionary is hiring a #lexicography #researcher to conduct research on the English language and support the #editorial process for its world-leading language #ReferenceWorks. Application deadline: August 3rd. https://jobs.oup.com/uk/jobs/vacancy/lexicography-researcher-oxford/3528/description/ #Bookstodon

https://boffosocko.com/2023/07/24/vocabulary-notebooks-criminally-insane-asylum-patients-zettelkasten-the-thesaurus-linguae-latinae-and-digital-dictionaries/

https://boffosocko.com/2023/04/27/knowing-what-we-know-the-transmission-of-knowledge-from-ancient-wisdom-to-modern-magic-by-simon-winchester/

some thoughts on the book The dictionary of lost words: https://proseandpassion.blogspot.com/2023/02/words-lost-and-found.html #oxford #OxfordEnglishDictionary #BookReview

This year, Oxford Languages, the creator of the Oxford English Dictionary, titled "goblin mode" as the 2022 Word of the Year, meaning it best reflected the ethos and mood of the past 12 months.

#GoblinMode #OxfordLanguages #OxfordEnglishDictionary #OED #WordOfTheYear #WordOfTheYear2022

https://www.npr.org/2022/12/05/1140696560/oxford-word-2022-goblin-mode

I confess I had not until today even heard of 'goblin mode'. I am so out of the loop. (EDIT and yet... the concept feels very, very familiar) #GoblinMode #OxfordUniversityPress #OxfordEnglishDictionary #WordOfTheYear
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-63857329