OUPblog

Speaking in and about tongues

By Anatoly Liberman
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Shining light on sun safety for Sun Awareness Week 2025

By David Zheng, Rebecca McCarthy, and Shehnaz Ahmed
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Excerpts from Electronic Enlightenment’s Spring 2025 update

By Sophie Dickson, Olivia Flynn, Tessa van Wijk, and Kate Davies
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Cover image of "Stomp Off, Let's Go" by Ricky Riccardi

12 key titles to read this Jazz Appreciation Month [reading list]

By Jo Wojtkowski

In honor of Jazz Appreciation Month (JAM), we celebrate the extraordinary history and heritage of jazz, exploring its music, culture, and people who made it thrive. We hope that this reading list of 12 stimulating and inspiring books—like the number of keys in an octave—will spark your interest and encourage your participation in this truly original American art form—to read books about it, to study the music, to play and perform, and ultimately to listen to all things jazz.

From meaning to moaning

By Anatoly Liberman

Few people realize how troublesome the word mean is. We have mean as in meaning (“what do you mean?”); mean “ignoble, base” (as in such a mean fellow), and mean, as in the meantime and meanwhile.

Slow down your writing

By Edwin L. Battistella

Sentences that are clear in our heads may be less clear when they come out of our mouths. When we talk, we get feedback from our audience or conversational partners. We observe facial expressions and body language. People may ask for clarification when something is not clear or they may correct us when we misspeak. Understanding is never perfect, but it’s doable in many face-to-face instances. On the page or the screen, it’s a different story.

A dictionary dance around Hag

By Anatoly Liberman

As usual, I’ll begin with a comment on the letters I have received. I never wrote that too few queries about words of unknown origin were coming my way: I complained that a stream of letters addressed to Oxford Etymologist had in principle become a trickle.

Ten ways to see the Elton story [playlist]

By Matthew Restall

Sir Elton John is a living superlative, unequaled in music history in terms of global sales, awards, and career longevity. Here are ten tracks to kick off each chapter of On Elton John; each song prompts a story about Elton, each one is a window that offers a particular way of seeing him and his career.

Towards dynamic accountability

By Bob Tricker

Accountability is a fundamental component of governance, whether the governed entity is a country, a company, or indeed any other corporate entity, including charities, cooperatives, the NHS, or universities.

Oxford Intersections: research from all angles [quiz]

By Matthew Colley

We’re excited to announce the launch of Oxford Intersections, a new interdisciplinary research tool from Oxford University Press. Containing original research from diverse disciplines, this tool provides a comprehensive approach to problem-solving, fostering innovation and collaboration.

A thinker and her thought

By Friederike Moltmann

Thinker statues form a fascinating, but little explored cultural theme. While we may be most familiar with Rodin’s thinker, thinker statues, both male and female, appear in many very diverse cultures. They include the pensive bodhisattvas of Korea and China, the pensive Christ statues of Eastern Europe, the thinker statues of Kazakhstan and Africa, as well as the female thinkers of the pre-Columbian Tumaco-La Tolita culture.

The end of the witch hunt

By Anatoly Liberman

My sincere thanks to all those who commented on the recent posts. I have never heard about the rule about one day referring only to the future.

We the Men

By Jill Elaine Hasday

Amidst the flurry of headlines about the Trump administration’s first weeks in power, who will notice that the federal government’s largest agency no longer celebrates Black History Month or Women’s History Month? The Department of Defense’s January 31 guidance declaring “Identity Months Dead at DoD” may have been lost in the news cycle.

At Elizabeth Peabody’s bookshop

By Randall Fuller

Most histories situate the birth of feminism in the United States at the Seneca Falls Convention, held on 19-20 July 1848, in upstate New York. Yet as I researched and wrote Bright Circle: Five Extraordinary Women in the Age of Transcendentalism, I came to believe the movement had its roots almost a decade earlier and in a most unlikely place: the Boston bookshop owned and operated by Elizabeth Palmer Peabody.

Witches and witchcraft

By Anatoly Liberman

Right after the appearance of the post on hag (March 5, 2025), I received a letter with a question about the origin of the word witch.

The hag’s revenge and vindication

By Anatoly Liberman

This is an essay on the word hag, but let me first thank those who have commented on the latest posts, corrected the mistakes, and made suggestions.

Does it matter if what I do doesn’t make a difference?

By David Benatar

Moral vegetarians think that we should not eat meat because doing so wrongfully harms animals. One response is that, in any typical case, purchasing and eating meat will do no harm. The animal has already been killed, and markets are not so sensitive that an individual purchase or meat meal will lead to additional animals being killed.

Cover image of "Meaningful Economics: Making the Science of Prosperity More Human" by Bart J. Wilson

Making economics more human

By Bart Wilson

As the “official doctrine of neoclassical economics, enshrined in all respectable textbooks,” the esteemed game theorist Ken Binmore says, revealed preference theory “succeeds in accommodating the infinite variety of the human race within a single theory simply by denying itself the luxury of speculating about what is going on inside someone’s head. Instead, it pays attention only to what people do.”

Cover for "The Enlightenment's Most Dangerous Woman: Émilie du Châtelet and the Making of Modern Philosophy" by Andrew Janiak

Five inspiring biographies for Women’s History Month [reading list]

By Amy Guest

In honor of Women’s History Month, we are celebrating the lives and legacies of inspiring women throughout history that played path-breaking roles in shaping philosophy and literature. This reading list features five books that amplify the achievements of these women who were either overshadowed by men, or subject to hierarchical thinking.