Clique – Podictionary Word of the Day
[display_podcast] The word clique sounds French doesn’t it. Well, it was. Of course it means “a tight group of people” and is often used in a disparaging way.
Women Who Walk Heavily or Too Much
By Anatoly Liberman In olden days women were supposed to be sweet, docile, and, if possible, incorporeal. On the other hand, men, subject to the universal law of contrasts, threw their weight about, and, once they “arrived,” demonstrated corpulence. They invented countless offensive words referring to women’s way of walking.
Safire Speaks
William Safire videos.
The Last Word
This is, I’m sad to say, the final installment of “From A to Zimmer” on OUPblog. As of next week I’m departing Oxford University Press for a new position as executive producer of ‘Visual Thesaurus’. I’ve greatly enjoyed the platform afforded me by OUPblog, but I’ve always had a niggling concern.
How Dictionaries Ruined My Scrabble Game
Ammon Shea explains how dictionaries ruined his Scrabble game.
Replica – Podictionary Word of the Day
Charles Hodgson looks at the word “replica.”
Still in the Bottleneck, or, Chasing for the First Fiasco
Anatoly examines the origin of the word fiasco.
What Every beginning Dictionary Reader Should Know
Ammon Shea shares some advice for beginning dictionary readers.
The First Blogger
William Safire blogs about blogs.
Know Your Nonsense–A Lexical Guide to Horse Apples
Mark Peters looks at synonyms for “bullshit”.
Lotus – Podictionary Word of the Day
Welcome to podictionary. My name is Charles Hodgson For almost three years now I’ve been producing podictionary – the podcast for word lovers and I’m very pleased to now be able to bring a weekly episode to the OUPblog. Every Thursday I’ll be posting a word-of-the-day podcast here. There are two main differences between podictionary […]
How the Protocharlatan Escaped Justice
This story might be titled “Some Words Have a Reputation to Live Up To,” (Part Two). While tracing the convoluted history of ‘charade’, I promised to devote some space to ‘charlatan’. The element ‘char-‘ unites them, and in scholarly works they have frequently been mentioned in one breath.
Your cheatin’ words
Ammon Shea explores cheating in the OED.
Monthly Gleanings
Anatoly answers questions posed in March.
Text Messaging as Toy or Tool
Naomi S. Baron, author of Always On: Language in an Online and Mobile World, explains to us the generation gap in text messaging.
Absurd entries in the OED: an introduction by Ammon Shea
All dictionaries have mistakes. Ghost words creep in, there are occasional misspellings, or perhaps the printer was hung over one day and misplaced some punctuation. In addition to these normal forms of human error there are others that are created by language, as it continues its inexorable change.