Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World
A new interpretation of the Domesday survey, the famous survey of England taken on the orders of William the Conqueror in 1086, has emerged from a major study of the survey’s earliest surviving manuscript. It is now clear that the survey was more even more efficient, complex, and sophisticated than previously supposed.
We are in the midst of a Covid economy that has decimated the cities of America. It’s essential for us all to recognize that we’re in this together and to support local and national efforts to rebuild, on the basis of a unified public consciousness that has been markedly absent from our divided nation in recent years.
I received a query from my colleague, who asked me what I think about a possible tie between “Sheela na gig” and the English word “gig.” Therefore, I decided to devote a special post to it.
I think we can all agree that recent months of pandemic and political unrest have been difficult ones, and often entirely bereft of humor. I am therefore pleased to announce the revival of the Grove Music Online Spoof Article Contest 2021.
A lake, sea, or coastal ocean turns into a dead zone when the supply of oxygen from the atmosphere and photosynthesis is overwhelmed by the use of oxygen during organic material degradation.
The label “natural” connotes a certain imagery: freshly grown food, pure water, safe consumption. Things described as “natural” are portrayed as being simple and lacking the intervention of culture, industry, and artificiality. Let’s take a closer look.
Who amongst us would have imagined that in late 2019 a normally uneventful event would change the world forever? As far as we can tell, all that happened is that a particularly clever virus (SARS-CoV2, which causes COVID-19) spread from an animal to a human.
Charles Darwin’s birthday on 12 February is widely celebrated in the scientific community and has come to be known as “Darwin day.” In recognition of Darwin’s 212th birthday this year we have put together a list of ten interesting facts about the father of evolution.
If you, your family, or friends ever go near the shore of the ocean or a lake, you need to learn about tsunamis. Unfortunately, the current public perception of the tsunami hazards is all too often a three-step denial: (1) It won’t happen to me. (2) If it does, it won’t be that bad. (3) If it is bad, there’s nothing I could’ve done anyway. This perception must be changed in order to save lives and build a culture of tsunami hazard preparedness.
Impulses behind word formation never change. This statement surprised one of our readers. However, if we assume that most “natural” words are, at least to some degree, sound-symbolic and/or sound-imitative (onomatopoeic), such monosyllabic complexes as kob, kab, keb, kub, kid, kat, and their likes must have arisen again and again in the course of language history, even if every time they were tied to different objects.
Joseph Riepel’s celebrated music theory treatise, Anfangsgründe zur musicalischen Setzkunst, unfolds in a lively and witty manner. Most of its chapters are framed in the guise of lessons, presented as dialogues between a teacher and student.
I was fortunate enough to rehearse daily with the Truro cathedral choristers from the age of 8 to 13 (in the days before girl choristers). This fostered in me a love for choral music and for singing, which has continued throughout my life.