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Mark Peters, the genius behind the blog Wordlustitude in addition to being a Contributing Editor for Verbatim: The Language Quarterly, a language columnist for Babble, and a blogger for Psychology Today, is our guest blogger this week. Below Peters encourages us to make old words hip again.

Did you hear about the nude pictures of Lindsay Lohan and Roger Clemens drinking a human growth hormone/grain alcohol smoothie?

You have? Then let me tell you what my brother’s nanny has been up to with your father’s mechanic in the gazebo. (more…)

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Jeff Prucher, editor of Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction, has kindly guest blogged for us this week. Below, learn how science fiction has conceived of a crime, which has never been committed.

There have been a number of news reports in recent months that reveal a dark underside to the word of organ transplants. In one case, corpses were illegally purchased from funeral directors, and usable tissues were resold to be used in transplants. In another: (more…)

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Americans have two “super” events coming up on the national agenda: Super Bowl XLII on Sunday between the Giants and Patriots, followed two days later by Super Tuesday, when about half the country will vote in Democratic and Republican presidential primaries. Fox, the network that is broadcasting the Super Bowl, is even creating a Super mashup before the game begins, with two hours of coverage on Sunday morning mixing politics and football. It’s all quite super, some might say super-duper. So how did we get to this level of superheated superabundancy?

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By Anatoly Liberman

First I would like to respond to the comments on my discussion of spelling reform. I was aware of the continuing efforts by some groups to simplify English spelling, but I think their chances of success are slim, because there is no public awareness of the damage done by our erratic spelling system. We need respelling bins, similar to the now ubiquitous recycling bins. (more…)

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Now that U.S. voters are deeply enmeshed in the presidential primary season, I’ve been thinking a lot about the word primary. (Or maybe it was last week’s column on subprime that primed the pump.) Primary and its colleague caucus are distinctly American political terms for the processes by which a party’s candidates are selected, and tracing the usage of these words offers a fascinating glimpse into the evolution of the nation’s electoral process.
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For the past few decades, Lake Superior State University has issued an annual “List of Words Banished from the Queen’s English for Misuse, Overuse and General Uselessness.” Candidates for “banished words” are nominated by the public at large, and then a committee decides on the final selection, which is released every year on New Year’s Day. The 2008 list is a typical mix of terms deemed by the committee to be clichéd, improperly used, or objectionable in some other way, with a particular emphasis on management-speak, Internet lingo, and youth slang. Of course, the LSSU list is never effective in actually banning words — in fact, some words from years past have flourished quite successfully (“online” in 1996, “9-11” in 2002, “blog” in 2005). In general, the list is most informative as a barometer of pet peeves about language: what is it that gets under people’s skin, so much so that they think words (or particularly disliked senses of words) should be removed from the lexicon forthwith?

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Earlier this week I spent an enjoyable hour being interviewed on the Wisconsin Public Radio show “At Issue with Ben Merens.” Though our topic was ostensibly the New Oxford American Dictionary’s choice of locavore as Word of the Year, as well as other notable words of 2007, we soon ventured into other word-related matters when the lines were opened for listeners’ calls. One caller had his own coinage that he hoped might someday achieve the fame of locavore and other recent additions to the language. Since English lacks a singular pronoun that can be used to refer to a person regardless of gender, the caller suggested that O be used for this purpose (since I is used as the first-person singular pronoun). (more…)

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When Al Gore received the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to raise awareness about man-made climate change, his acceptance speech featured a new word, or rather a new sense of an old word, that Oxford lexicographers have been watching closely: carbon, in the sense of “carbon dioxide or other gaseous carbon compounds released into the atmosphere.” As I wrote back in July, this extended sense of carbon can be found in all sorts of novel lexical compounds: carbon-neutral (2006 New Oxford American Dictionary Word of the Year), carbon footprint, carbon tax, carbon trading, and so forth. In his speech, Gore introduced another compound into the mix: carbon summer.
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Jessica Prentice coined the word “locavore” which was chosen as the Oxford Word of the Year! We asked her how the word came about. Her answer is below.

There’s only one word for it: giddy. That’s how I’ve been feeling since reading the first email informing me that “locavore” was voted 2007’s “Word of the Year” by Oxford University Press. It’s the same feeling you have when you’re twelve years old and the guy you have a crush on gives you a valentine, and doesn’t give one to anyone else. You blush, you jump up and down in your seat, and you send excited text messages to the people you know will understand.

And how exciting to be asked to blog about it and be able to tell the story from my point of view! From the very beginning, the word “locavore” had legs. It’s actually been a fascinating phenomenon to watch: to see something that never existed before take on meaning and gather momentum. It’s also a phenomenon that would have been impossible before the internet. So, how did the word “locavore” come about? (more…)

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It’s that time of the year again. It is finally starting to get cold (if you are worried about the global warming maybe you should become carbon-neutral) and the New Oxford American Dictionary is preparing for the holidays by making its biggest announcement of the year. The 2007 Word of the Year is (drum-roll please) locavore.

The past year saw the popularization of a trend in using locally grown ingredients, taking advantage of seasonally available foodstuffs that can be bought and prepared without the need for extra preservatives.

The “locavore” movement encourages consumers to buy from farmers’ markets or even to grow or pick their own food, arguing that fresh, local products are more nutritious and taste better. Locavores also shun supermarket offerings as an environmentally friendly measure, since shipping food over long distances often requires more fuel for transportation. (more…)

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Last week’s column focused on the havoc that automated spellcheckers can wreak when a suggested “correction” turns out to be utterly wrong. More often, though, people who over-rely on spellcheckers can run into trouble when a misspelling is actually a legitimate word and therefore isn’t flagged as an error. There’s a well-circulated bit of verse (with variations going back to 1992) poking fun at people’s tendency to ignore mistakes that spellcheckers miss:

Eye halve a spelling chequer,
It came with my Pea Sea.
It plane lee marks four my revue
Miss steaks I can knot sea.
Eye ran this poem threw it,
Your shore real glad two no.
Its vary polished in it’s weigh.
My chequer tolled me sew.

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Dictionaries, for all their virtues, can sometimes be troublemakers. Ever since the dawn of word processing, dictionaries have been mined to create wordlists for automated spellcheckers. (OUP, for example, offers its own spellchecker on CD-ROM in addition to licensing its dictionary data for various handheld devices and software add-ons.) These dictionary-derived inventories are used to detect and correct spelling errors, by checking to see if the words in a user’s text match what’s found in the wordlist. If an error is detected, algorithms help decide what the user might have meant to type and alternatives are suggested from the accepted list of words. Of course, a spellchecker is only as good as its wordlist and its correction algorithms. Anyone who has spellchecked a document is familiar with the laughably incongruous suggestions that are sometimes provided. And every once in a while incautious users allow these laughers to get through to their final text.

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Lost in the hubbub about the new words and disappearing hyphens in the latest edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary is a more subtle type of editorial revision. The Shorter, as a dictionary built on historical principles, provides information about the age of words and their main senses. The date range of earliest known use is noted in each entry by E (early), M (mid), or L (late) plus a century number: thus “M18″ means a word was first recorded in the mid-18th century. This style of dating is admittedly approximate, but giving the exact year of a word’s first recorded use would lend a false sense of precision. We very rarely can determine the first “baptismal” usage of a word with any confidence. But even with dates given by rough century divisions, the editors of the Shorter have been able to revise the dating of nearly 4,500 words and senses based on discoveries of earlier recorded uses, known as “antedatings” in the dictionary world. Much of this new antedating information is derived from the ongoing work done for the third edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. Since I dabble in what my colleague Erin McKean recently called “the competitive sport of antedating,” I thought I’d share a discovery of mine that made it into the new edition of the Shorter.

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On Tuesday, in celebration of National Dictionary Day, ABC World News with Charles Gibson ran a piece about how some old expressions are being respelled (and reimagined) in new ways. They had me on to say a few words about how such respellings sometimes become so common that they make their way into the hallowed pages of Oxford’s dictionaries. (You can watch the webcast version of the segment here.) The whole thing was inspired by an OUPblog column I wrote a few months ago, “Shifting Idioms: An Eggcornucopia.” With the help of some amusing animated characters, ABC News correspondent Robert Krulwich took a look at a few of the “eggcorns” I discussed, namely vocal chords (vs. vocal cords), free reign (vs. free rein), and shoe-in (vs. shoo-in). Despite the light-hearted tone of the segment, I’ve received a number of grave responses wondering why Oxford University Press is so cavalierly allowing “corrupted” spellings into its dictionaries. So perhaps some clarification is in order. (more…)

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By Kirsty OUP-UK

All of us here at OUP-UK were saddened to hear of Ned Sherrin’s death on October 1, from throat cancer, at the age of 76. He was familiar to virtually everyone in the country as the presenter of the Radio 4 programme Loose Ends, but during his many years in showbusiness he was also a theatre director, film producer, restaurant critic, and brought us the early 1960s revolutionary satirical television series That Was The Week That Was.

Ned was also a writer and, among his many publications, he compiled three editions of The Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations (first published in 1995, with the most recent paperback being published in the UK last month), as well as two editions of I Wish I’d Said That.

Everyone at OUP sends their condolences and best wishes to Ned’s friends and family. (more…)

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We’re just five days away from Dictionary Day, the annual celebration of all things lexicographical held every 16th of October. Commemorating the anniversary of Noah Webster’s birth in 1758, it’s largely an opportunity for US school teachers to organize classroom activities encouraging students to build their dictionary skills and to exult in the joy of words. Those of us who are out of school can celebrate too, of course. We’ll have some dictionary-themed fun on OUPblog next week, but I thought I’d kick things off with a look at some of the great names in the Anglo-American tradition of lexicography. Just about everyone knows about Webster, who published the first truly American dictionaries in 1806 and 1828, but let’s also pay homage to some other dictionary doyens who might not be quite as well known to the public. (more…)

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By Anatoly Liberman

The following dialogue takes place in the play The Heir at Law by George Colman the younger:

Dick. But what a confounded Gig you look like.
Pangloss. A Gig! umph! That’s an Eton phrase; the Westminsters call it Quiz.—Act IV, Scene 2.

The play was first performed at the Haymarket in 1797. The OED quotes Pangloss’s reply at gig, but it is the exchange that will interest us. (more…)

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When a new edition of a dictionary is published, you never know what people are going to pick up on as noteworthy. Last week, when the sixth edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary was officially launched, much of the surrounding publicity had to do with the all the brand-new material: the 2,500 new words and phrases and 1,300 new illustrative quotes. But what’s gotten just as much attention is something that’s missing. The hyphen, that humble piece of connective punctuation, has been removed from about 16,000 compound words appearing in the text of the Shorter. The news has been making the rounds everywhere from the BBC to the Wall Street Journal. “Hyphens are the latest casualty of the internet age,” writes the Sydney Morning Herald. “Thousands of hyphens perish as English marches on,” a Reuters headline bleakly reads. A satirical paper even warns of a “hyphen-thief” on the loose. But don’t worry, hyphenophiles: the punctuation lives on, even if it’s entering uncertain terrain in the electronic era. (more…)

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Thanks to the wonderful folks at Jonesin’ Crosswords we have a fun way for you to discover the new words in the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. To learn more about the SOED check out Ben Zimmer’s columns here and here.

“In the Language”–*New entries from the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, Sixth Edition.
by Matt Jones

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Today’s an exciting day for OUP, as we launch the sixth edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. If this were a birth announcement, we’d have to give the vitals: Oxford University Press joyfully announces the arrival of twin volumes, weighing a total of 13.6 pounds (6.2 kilograms), with 3,800 pages, 6 million words of text, more than half a million definitions, and 84,000 illustrative quotations. Welcome to the world, Shorter volumes 1 and 2! (Oh, and your diminutive friend too, the Shorter on CD-ROM.) (more…)

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By Anatoly Liberman

All over the world when people decide to name cardinal points, they look at the sky. Terms used for orientation should therefore be immediately transparent: we expect them to mean “toward sunrise,” “toward sunset,” “related to a certain constellation,” “in the direction of a certain wind,” and so forth. And indeed, Latin oriens “east” is akin to oriri “to rise,” while occidens “west” is a cognate of occidere “to fall down.” Speakers of Latin did not need an etymologist to interpret those words (such specialists existed even then, for example, Varro, the most famous of them all): sunrise and sunset tell their own story. But of the English words—east, west, north, and south—only the first reveals its past to the initiated. The other three are so opaque that after centuries of guessing their origin remains a matter of dispute. (more…)

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Ben’s column this week looks at the fascinating history of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. He explains how the OED, quite possibly OUP’s most important book (well, series of books), got trimmed to a manageable two volumes and why this development was important. Enjoy!

In 1902, a fellow named William Little took on the task of making a “shorter” version of the monumental Oxford English Dictionary. When it was finally published in 1933 (more than a decade after Little’s death), the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary took up two thick volumes totalling 2,500 pages. Still, the abridgment proved to be a more convenient (and more affordable) alternative to the massive OED. This month sees the publication of the sixth edition of the Shorter, and the two volumes now span more than 3,700 pages, packed with more than half a million definitions covering ten centuries of English. Little’s dictionary, it turns out, is far from little. And despite its name, it’s not getting any shorter! (more…)

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Did you know that Dr. Seuss is credited with inventing the word nerd? I didn't know this; I discovered it last night while perusing my dictionary, something I like to do. (I think it was Steven Wright who said he reads the dictionary because he figures all the books he wants to read are in there.) Standard advice for writers is to avoid using slang because it becomes dated; remember when everyone was saying, "She's a Betty, she's a Veronica"? Then there's that really dated stuff like groovy, outta sight, and far out (or "farm out," as my friend K. likes to say). Watch The Brady Bunch and you'll hear all of these.

Some words resist the sands of time. I feel safe using the word "cool," which has been in use since at least the 1930s. Other words with staying power: dork (1967), uptight (1934), jock (1963), and nerd (1951).

Nerds have excellent characteristics, according to all the dictionaries I read this morning. They are intellectual, possess above-average IQs, and are single-minded and accomplished at technical and scientific pursuits--who wouldn't want to be a nerd? How did this word come to mean an awkward person, a socially inept dork--a loser? I picture a guy with thick black glasses; you probably see the same guy, he's such a stereotype.

In any case, when I read the etymology of nerd, I mistakenly thought it referred to my favorite book from the Cat in the Hat line, Put Me In the Zoo. I loved this book when I was a kid. In second grade, I wrote a passionate book report lauding the pathos and conflict in the story. I even illustrated my report:



Now I know what you're all thinking: How can I get Danette to illustrate all my books? Well, my friends, I hung up my drawing sticks after a serious mishap involving off-brand crayons. (You know what I'm talking about--when your mom thinks you won't notice the difference and she buys those store brand crayons and it's like drawing with candles--all wax, no color.)

Going back to the book report, here's what the teacher wrote:



Second grade, people! (And did you notice my really good cursive?) I have a single-minded pursuit--writing. I love it. I am a nerd. And I am not ashamed.

By Anatoly Liberman

The Devil is uppermost in people’s thoughts, and his names are many. One of them is Old Nick. Its origin is obscure. The word nicker “water sprite,” explained as an old participle “(a) washed one,” is unrelated to it. Then there is nickel. The term was easy to coin, but copper could not be obtained from the nickel ore, and Axel F. von Cronstedt, a Swedish mineralogist despite von before Cronstedt, called the copper-colored metal copper nickel (German Kupfernickel), later shortened to nickel, after the name of a perfidious mountain demon (wolfram and especially cobalt have a similar history). (more…)

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What’s your favorite word? On Wordie.org, a website launched last year by John McGrath, you can post lists of “words you love, words you hate, whatever.” So far, about 4,800 users (”Wordies”) have posted a total of 264,000 words, 90,000 of which are unique. In this efflorescence of logophilia, what word strikes the fancy of the most Wordies? Topping the list of the “most wordied” words is schadenfreude, submitted by 250 users. This German loanword, defined by the New Oxford American Dictionary as “pleasure derived by someone from another person’s misfortune,” easily outpaces runners-up like quixotic, serendipity, loquacious, and plethora. (If defenestrate and defenestration joined forces, that handy term for throwing someone out a window would come in a close second.) What does it say about Web-savvy language lovers that the word they find most notable describes malicious mirth in the misery of others? Are we all just a bunch of sadists?
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