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Academic Insights for the Thinking World
Squeezed middle: the section of society regarded as particularly affected by inflation, wage freezes, and cuts in public spending during a time of economic difficulty, consisting principally of those people on low or middle incomes.
Birds are singing, the sun is shining and I am joyful in the morning without caffeine. Why? Because it is Word of the Year time (or WOTY as we refer to it around the office). Every year the ‘New Oxford American Dictionary’ celebrates the holidays by making its biggest announcement of the year.
Do you keep the tires on your car properly inflated to maximize your gas mileage? Have you removed the roof rack to streamline the car and reduce drag? Do you turn your engine off rather than idle at long stoplights? If you said yes to any of these questions you just might be a ‘hypermiler’.
It’s that time of the year again. It is finally starting to get cold, 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’; a trend in using locally grown, seasonal ingredients.
The Oxford word of the year is…
The Oxford Word of the Year is a word or expression chosen to reflect the passing year in language. Every year, the Oxford Dictionaries team debates over a selection of candidates for Word of the Year, choosing the one that best captures the ethos, mood, or preoccupations of that particular year. The 2018 Oxford Word […]
The child in me was excited to see ‘adulting’ as one of the shortlisted words for the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year 2016. Adulting is on the minds–and tongues–of many of my millennial-generation college students. They explain that it is about assuming adult responsibilities like managing money, showing up at a job, buying food and paying rent, getting health care, and more.
Smiling face? Grimacing face? Speak-No-Evil Monkey? With the announcement of emoji as the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year, we asked a number of scholars for their thoughts on this new word and emerging linguistic phenomenon.
Selfie – the Oxford Word of the Year for 2013 – is a neologism defined as “a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website”.
Here at Oxford, we love words. We love when they have ancient histories, we love when they have double-meanings, we love when they appear in alphabet soup, and we love when they are made up.
Ammon Shea reveals how the Oxford Word of the Year is chosen.
Jessica Prentice talks about how she coined the word of the year.