Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World
To celebrate the publication of our 800th Very Short Introduction, we’ve put together a timeline featuring our series milestones, from our first Introduction co-authored by famed classicist Mary Beard, all the way to our upcoming introduction to rock ‘n’ roll.
Legal education, at least in the Anglosphere, has been undergoing a quiet but very recognisable transformation. The case study method, developed by Christopher Columbus Langdell at Harvard in the 1870s, is steadily giving way to ‘authentic’, ‘real life’ or ‘experiential’ learning, wherein theory and practice are intermeshed.
The history of color names presents countless problems, and the literature on the subject is enormous. Today’s post is only about some curious uses of the word red in English.
Recently, I went to a talk on telicity in verbs. If the term is unfamiliar to you, you are not alone.
My story today is about several words referring to aftermath. All of them have a rather confusing sound shape.
To the modern eye, this man in his dark suit probably looks perfectly normal—perhaps even boring. But what if this ubiquitous uniform is actually one of the most powerful and heavily engineered political institutions in Western history?
Over the last few decades, scholarship in the arts has undergone a significant shift towards questions and topics related to animals and our relationships with them.
When a collection passes 500 titles, it’s tempting to focus on the milestone. But what’s more interesting is the story behind the number, the years of collaboration between authors, editors, institutions, funders, and readers who share a commitment to making scholarship easier to discover, read, teach, and build upon.
Today’s story is about boxing (that is, about the word box).
Spelling Bee is back.
Some parts of the story I am going to tell can be found in most dictionaries, but it is the attempts to connect a few distant dots that may be interesting to those who wonder “where words come from.”
My grandmother was one of those speakers who had an “r” in the word wash, pronouncing it “warsh”. For her, the nation’s capital was “Warshington”, D.C., and the vegetable was a “squarsh.”
Soon after the blog Oxford Etymologist came into existence on March 5, 2006 (more than twenty years ago!), I wrote a post on the word hubba-hubba.
The following is offered as a manifesto: a bold assertion of our unique musicianship. We – music therapists – are different from performers and educators.
Sun Awareness Week (11-17 May 2026) is the British Association of Dermatologists’ (BAD) annual week-long campaign dedicated to raising awareness of the public health risk of sun exposure, from traditional tanning to sunbed use.
For many older adults, a hip fracture arrives without warning, suddenly changing the course of daily life.