Tag: OXFORDENGLISHDICTIONARY

Future linguists will have a field day with this one. The Oxford English Dictionary (the "definitive record of the English language," in case you were keeping track) just released its latest update, and "OMG," "LOL" and even "<3" made the cut. These Internet acronyms were included due to their cultural relevance today, but it turns out most have origins pre-dating those pesky tween texters. ...

As a child, your writer got his geek on by traipsing down to the local library, where a massive microprint edition of the Compact Oxford English Dictionary was on display. The antique tome required a magnifying glass to read, and exuded some kind of occult authority with its Bible-like, tissue paper pages. But that experience will not be shared by the younger generation, as the Internet is ...

If, like the great Sylvia Plath, you punctiliously plot your prose with a thesaurus, may we entreat you to visit Save the Words? The prim nebbishes over at the Oxford University Press went crazy with Flash to develop the site, which features words that have all but disappeared from standard English usage and also asks users to "adopt" the archaisms in their daily communications. In a tragicomic ...

We reported back in November that the New Oxford American Dictionary had voted "unfriend" as 2009's word of the year. In Britain, the holy birthplace of the OED, a recent survey of this year's neologisms, led by TV personality and lexicographer Susie Dent, revealed that social networking terms remain some of the most popular new words in the English lexicon. One of the most often used words ...