The Historical Thesarus of the Oxford English Dictionary: Some fun facts and figures
Historial Thesaurus Week
Some facts and figures about the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary.
Introducing The Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary
Historical Thesaurus Week
The Timeline for the HTOED.
National Book Award Contest: Win Prizes!
OUP is giving it away to celebrate the National Book Awards!
Podictionary Interview – Philip Durkin
A special podictionary episode with Philip Durkin.
F is for F*%#
Jesse Sheidlower is Editor at Large of the Oxford English Dictionary and author of The F-Word. Recognized as one of the foremost authorities on obscenity in English, he has written about language for a great many publications, including a recent article on Slate. Here, Jesse discusses the criteria for including certain words or obscenities in […]
Send in the Hench-poodles! An Underrated Prefix for Underlings
Mark Peters looks at the various uses of “hench” as a prefix.
A Derailed Myth, or, a Story of the Word Tram
Anatoly Liberman tours the history of the word tram.
John Dillinger Goes to the Movies
Author Elliott J. Gorn looks at John Dillinger films.
Henry Ford Learns the Most Expensive Art Lesson in History
An excerpt from Design in the USA by Jeffrey L. Meikle.
Riddle Me This, Riddle Me That: The Answer
The riddle answer!
Book Models
A look at two very personal cover images.
DSNA 2009, or,
Why don’t more people go to conferences?
Ammon Shea reports on the Dictionary Society of North America Conference.
Riddle Me This, Riddle Me That: Clue One
Gordon Thompson’s first riddle clue.
Fanspeak: The Lingo of Sci-Fi and Fantasy Fandom
Jeff Prucher looks at words coined by science fiction and fantasy fans.
A mystery-y-ish-y word trend: the –y suffix has gone bananas
Many lessons can be gleaned from watching reruns of ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’: Indirect sunlight is not an unlife-ender for vampires. Some small-town mayors may yearn to become giant unholy snake things (no surprise there). As Cordelia Chase said, “People, you’ve got to leave your tombs earthed.” (Whoops, that was on the Buffy spinoff Angel—but whatever).
First Contact
How would you communicate with an alien? A look at how Science Fiction authors tackled the problem.