Category Archives: Dictionaries

News and views on what is happening in the world of dictionaries

How To Ungoogle The Dictionary

Posted on March 27, 2013 | 2 Comments

We all know that Google’s influence on our everyday lives is huge, and Wordability has written in the past about how it affects language. But rather than allowing that influence to just exist naturally, the technology giant has now taken action to directly influence a dictionary definition. The result has been that lexicography has shot into public consciousness around the world.

Google’s beef is with the Language Council of Sweden, which included the word “ogooglebar” or “ungoogleable” in its list of top words of 2012. The definition given was ‘something which cannot be found with a search engine’. However, Google objected, saying that the definition should only refer to being unable to find something when using Google, rather than any generic search engine.

Not wishing to be dictated to, or to enter into lengthy legal proceedings, the Language Council removed the word completely, while launching a robust defence of the word and criticising Google for their stance.

Sweden seems to be a hotbed of language innovation, and those who look after the language there need to be applauded for their reaction to this. Of course Google cannot dictate what should or shouldn’t be in a dictionary. Frankly they should be flattered that their company name has entered the hallowed turf trodden by Hoover or Portakabin, trade names which have crossed the divide from a single brand to become the generic term for anything in that genre. When the brand becomes the definitive word, surely it is a sign for those behind the brand that the battle is won.

Anybody using ungoogleable, or indeed Google as a verb, is using it in a generic form. Yes, most of us actually use Google itself when performing a web search, but I doubt we are thinking about that fact if we use the word, we are using it to mean search the internet. I was surprised to see that official definitions of “to Google” mention Google in them, rather than the generic act. Presumably others have been wary of the Google trademark police.

But I think the most telling thing of all is a quote given by Google to the BBC. A spokesman said: “While Google, like many businesses, takes routine steps to protect our trademark, we are pleased that users connect the Google name with great search results.” And maybe that is the point. Maybe the company is actually quite pleased when Google is used to mean generic searching, but steps in when any negative definition comes along. But the incident has not served at all to link the company with great search results in people’s minds. In fact, it simply reinforces the view that Google controls everything we do. And is now seeking to influence the meaning of words. Which, of course, it can’t.

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Canberra Bashing Comes of Age

Posted on March 7, 2013 | Leave a comment

I must admit to never having heard the word Canberra Bashing. I am a little ashamed of this, given my Australian wife and reasonable lengths of time spent in the country as a result. But no matter.

Canberra Bashing has been added to the Australian National Dictionary. This publication catalogues words which are quintessentially Australian and say something about the history and culture of the country, and lexicographers feel that Canberra Bashing is a term which fits the bill.

The word has two meanings: one is the act of criticising the Australian federal government and its beaurocracy, giving it a more generic meaning of knocking authority; the other is the more parochial act of criticising the city of Canberra and its inhabitants. I have been to the Australian capital once in my life and, as I recall, l was probably guilty of Canberra bashing on my return, albeit that I didn’t know there was a handy word which to describe it.

This is clearly an Australian word, with local resonance, so it is virtually certain that it will not become a part of vocabulary in the wider English-speaking word. However, it would be nice to think that bashing could start to take on suffix duties in the manner of a -gate or a -leaks. Imagine the bashing fun we could have by appending it to all manner of places and people who provoke our ire. It’s a whole new world of word formation which I am fully in favour of.

I also think that changes in Australian English really encapsulate the straight-talking nature of its people. A word localised to Canberra which has also just achieved official recognition by the Australian National Dictionary is the one used as a term for public servants. They are referred to as Pubes. It’s a great example of an apparently simple term which says so much about what people really think.

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The Baggy Green Guide To Bikers

Posted on February 27, 2013 | 1 Comment

The media coverage of the latest Oxford Dictionary online update has reversed the usual trend. Newly-added words tend to dominate the headlines. But on this occasion, it is a redefinition that has captured people’s attention.

Previously, biker has been defined as: ‘A motorcyclist, especially one who is a member  of a gang: a long-haired biker in dirty denims’. However, OED lexicographers have bowed to pressure from the biking community and removed the reference to grubbiness, with the new definition emerging as ‘A motorcyclist, especially one who is a member of a gang or group: a biker was involved in a collision with a car.’

While bikers are understood to be pleased with the decision, they may now have to deal with the fact that their mucky tendencies have been replaced in the definition by a slight on their safety record. I look forward to a future definition with the example ‘A clean-cut respectable-looking biker rode along the street and nothing of note happened at all’.

Mind you, if the OED wants to think about redefinitions, maybe it should start to ponder the meaning of the word ‘new’. After all, these quarterly updates always trumpet the new words being given status and inevitably, many of them are not that new, and I end up venting my anger about archaic words being celebrated for their novelty.

But I do feel that this quarter’s update has hit a new temporal low. As a cricket fan, I know that Baggy Green has become popularised in the last 20 years. But Australian cricketers have been donning them since time immemorial once they make the national team, so to acknowledge it now seems bizarre.

Even more bizarre is the arrival of Torch Relay and Olympic Flame. I know these really hit public consciousness during the London Olympics in 2012, but there were genuine new words associated with the torch relay such as Mother Flame, rather than terms, and indeed an event, that have been around for decades.

Or to use another apparently new word, I think this update is a bit of a mare.

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A Sombre Way To End The Year

Posted on December 20, 2012 | Leave a comment

A sombre word of the year to end 2012. Lexicographers at the Australian National Dictionary Centre have recognised the growing trend in Afghanistan for soldiers to die at the hands of their supposed Afghan colleagues. ‘Green-on–blue’ deaths have shot up in the last 12 months, affecting Australians in particular, and so ‘green-on-blue’ is the Australian word of the year.

The move typifies the downbeat nature of many of this year’s choices, from Omnishambles to Bluster, reflecting a sense that the last 12 months have been a difficult affair. And while that has been true, it has not been wholly the case. The Olympics-engendered feelgood summer in England was anything but depressing, and even though all of us who lived it knew it was an oasis away from the daily storm, it was no less enjoyable for all of that and no less a part of the year that has been.

Only the Van Dale dictionary in the Netherlands seems have come up with something more positive, with its Dutch word of the year unveiled as Project X-feest, a party organised via social media which ends up in a riot. Positive with a hint of negative, really.

The complexity of the year, together with the sense that one negative word doesn’t do it justice, was the reason for Wordability’s decision to go with five words of the year, each summing up a particular aspect of 2012. And if you want to rediscover those words in print as well as on your kindle, you now can,  as Eastwooding with the Mother Flame: The Words of 2012 is now available as a paperback in addition to the electronic version.

So as the year draws to a close, what can we expect in 2013. Well, assuming the Mayans were wrong, we can reasonably expect more depression, more hardship and more new words which reflect the dispirited mood which pervades the globe.

But I hope we see more than that, and we see linguistic creativity continue to flourish in a positive way, giving us new words which not only make us smile but also sum up things which have occurred which have made people’s lives a little richer.

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A Year Full of Bluster

Posted on November 20, 2012 | 1 Comment

I find myself at odds with dictionary.com following the announcement of its word of the year. The online dictionary has gone with Bluster as its word of 2012.

The choice is unexpected, as was Tergiversate in 2011. But it’s not that I mind the word that much, or the reasons for choosing it. I always prefer a word of the year to be something coined in that year, but dictionary.com made it clear last year that this was not a prerequisite in its selection procedure, so I will let it go.

The reasons for the selection are cogent – it has been a year of political bluster across the globe and meteorological bluster from the skies. So it is a neat word which ties together the controllable and uncontrollable elements of the last 12 months.

But what I really disagree with was the editors’ assertion that this has been a year which has been “lexicographically quiet”, to borrow their phrase. As the entries in Wordability should have demonstrated, 2012 has been anything but. Not only have there been some entertaining words coined in 2012, confirming the delicious flexibility of the language, but linguistic issues have also sparked significant debates, showing that language matters to people to a high degree. Just look back on Misogyny, Gay Marriage or Swedish Pronouns to see what I mean. It has been a year when issues of meaning and definition have hit the mainstream media.

So maybe Bluster is a good choice after all. It’s just that the bluster has extended to semantic matters as well.

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A Shambles of a Year

Posted on November 15, 2012 | 2 Comments

In many ways, the Oxford Dictionary choice of Omnishambles as the word of the year is an excellent one. It’s a great word, it sums up the mood of the times and it has become hugely popular during 2012.

But I can’t help being a little disappointed. As I said some months ago when the word flew back into public consciousness, it is not an original 2012 word. Omnishambles was actually coined in 2009 in the political comedy The Thick of It, and only now has it crossed from the Westminster to the global village. It would have been much more satisfying if the OED word of the year was one that came into being this year, as previous winners have been, rather than one which has simply been popularised.

I also wonder about the Oxford relationship with Labour leader Ed Miliband. Last year’s winner, Squeezed Middle, was coined by Mr Miliband, while the first recorded use this year also came from him, during Prime Minister’s Questions. Clearly we need to listen to what young Ed says next year if we want to take bets on the winner for 2013.

I was certainly surprised by the OED’s US word of the year, GIF, a computing term which has been around for a quarter of a century. They said it had really come into its own in 2012. But I must say in the tracking I have been doing throughout the year, it was not something I had really paid attention to.

There were some good words on the two shortlists, with Games Makers, To Medal, and Mobot representing the Olympics, and pleb reminding us of Andrew Mitchell. In the US I was pleased to see perennial Wordability favourite Nomophobia, fear of losing your mobile phone, under consideration.

Of course it is easy to carp. What are your words of the year, I hear you saying? Well fear not. I shall reveal my words of the year in the next couple of weeks, together with a very special announcement. And even though Omnishambles has certainly been on my shortlist as well, I can confirm now that it won’t be the winner.

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Nerds Fight Back in Sweden

Posted on November 8, 2012 | 1 Comment

I’m finding Sweden increasingly entertaining. I’ve never actually been there, my daughter has made me sit through Mamma Mia too many times and I have recently battled through more IKEA furniture than you can shake a flat-packed bedpost at, but nonetheless, my affection for the country grows. Purely linguistically, that is.

Earlier this year, an edict suggesting the creation of the word Hen as an asexual pronoun caused an international stir. Now, language has once again proved deliciously controversial and prompted wider questions about whether English should follow suit.

The dispute is over the word ‘Nerd’ in the official dictionary of the Swedish Academy, the Svenska Akademiens Ordlista. The definition, “a simplistic and ridiculous person, dork”, or various translations of the original “enkelspårig och löjeväckande person, tönt” has caused anger among the United Nerds of Sweden (OK, I’m not sure that such an organisation exists, but wouldn’t it be great if it did).

Anyway, more than 5,000 people have now signed Nörduppropet, an online petition arguing that the definition needs to change to reflect the drive and commitment of the average nerd, and the page is swamped with positively-spun alternatives which stress the hard work, dedication and zeal of nerds around the world.

So is the definition fair, and should we be similarly bashing the doors of English dictionary makers to make them revisit their definitions? Let’s have a look. While the Oxford Dictionary has a sense of “a single-minded expert in a particular field”, its primary definition is “a foolish or contemptible person who lacks social skills or is boringly studious”. And dictionary.com is not much better, with “a stupid, irritating, ineffectual, or unattractive person”, though it does also have the computer nerd sense.

Of course we are not going to start campaigning to change this. The reason? The definitions are accurate. Nerd is a pejorative word. While it undoubtedly covers the hard work and dedication of large numbers of people, and the world would be different if it wasn’t for the work of computer nerds who have created the technology we live by today, the sense of social inadequacy is just as much a part of the meaning as all of the positive connotations. I think the petition suggests that people don’t really like admitting that about themselves. There is nothing wrong with calling yourself a nerd, but in order to do it positively, you have to be slightly tongue in cheek about it and admit that it carries negative as well as positive connotations. I will freely admit I am a word nerd, which makes me frankly irritating at times. However, I don’t see myself ever signing a petition to change the meaning of a word when it has been rendered accurately.

Sweden’s dictionary makers perhaps need to add an extra sense to their definition to cover the hard work. But if they were to completely change the meaning, it would lose its quintessential nerdiness, and indeed accuracy. And I don’t think nerds would ever really stand for something that wasn’t absolutely correct.

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Misogyny Fuels Australian Debate

Posted on October 19, 2012 | 1 Comment

It’s rare when the redefining of a word in a dictionary finds itself at the centre of a political storm. But so it is in a spectacular row in Australia.

First, the background. Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard swept across YouTube recently following her extraordinary attack on opposition leader Tony Abbott in parliament. The attack followed the resignation of speaker Peter Slipper, who had been accused of sexual harassment. Opposition moves to unseat him saw Ms Gillard launch an attack on Mr Abbott’s own values.

Her tirade included the particularly memorable ”If he wants to know what misogyny looks like in modern Australia, he doesn’t need a motion in the House of Representatives; he needs a mirror.”

There was a lot of aftermath. One strand was about semantics. Ms Gillard had used misogyny, which means a hatred of women, to mean prejudice against women. Had it been a lack of understanding of the correct meaning? Or had it been a deliberate conflation of the two senses in order to score a political point?

And then the Macquarie ditionary came along. Australia’s foremost authority on language decided to extend its definition of misogyny to a synonym for sexism, an ‘entrenched prejudice against women’, to reflect the fact that the usage of the word has changed.

Outcry? You bet. While linguists might have applauded the dictionary editors for being responsive to language change and acting accordingly, they would also have said it was a bit late, with the Oxford English Dictionary pointing out it had added the new sense 10 years ago. Meanwhile, Ms Gillard’s opponents cried foul and anger over the fact that dictionaries should not be making political points by redefining words and it was not up to the Prime Minister to misuse a word and then expect lexicographers to back her up. The Macquarie editor was forced to issue a follow-up statement further defending the decision.

There has been much debate worldwide about the word misogyny, the word sexism, their worldwide usage, whether they are the same or different, whether dictionaries should make changes in this way, and so on.

I suspect that the outcome to all of this is that even if the word misogyny had only previously meant hatred of women in people’s minds, it will now be entrenched for all with the sense of sexism as well, and that this incident has simply confirmed an evolution in meaning that has been taking place over the last 20 or 30 years. And of course, that is what language does. It is just a little uncommon for that gradual shift to become the subject of such frenzied international debate. But I think it is fair to say that misogyny is now a word with a definitive new meaning.

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Amazeballs to Zhoosh: Collins’ First Fruits

Posted on September 10, 2012 | Leave a comment

The dictionary revolution has truly started. Collins recently announced plans to open up the dictionary-making process to the public, and the What’s Your Word feature is now a permanent slot on the company’s website, allowing anybody to submit a word for lexicographical consideration.

Well Collins has now revealed the first words which it will include in its online dictionary. It’s a pleasingly eclectic bunch, reflecting a wide range of subjects and showcasing many words which have long since deserved their place in official reference books.

Unsurprisingly, words from technology provide fertile ground for the list. BBM and Bing carry the flag for Blackberry and Microsoft, while Twitter is well represented with three entries, Tweetup, Twitterer and Twittersphere. Bashtag, a critical hashtag, is also included. It’s also good to see more generic terms like Liveblog, Captcha and Cyberstalking making the cut.

One trend in the list is new definitions for existing words, such as Facebook as a verb, as in To Facebook someone, a usage which Wordability discussed last year. My niece will also be pleased to see that Sick, meaning good, has now been included, as it means I will no longer give her a hard stare every time I hear her say it.

Much slang and informality has been recognised for the permanent place it now has in the language. As well as the titular Amazeballs (enthusiastic approval) and Zhoosh (to make more exciting), words such as Bridezilla (an intolerable planner of her own wedding), Frenemy (a friend who behaves like an enemy) and Mummy Porn (erotic fiction for women) are bound to get attention.

There are some unusual additions. Indian cookery is a surprisingly tasty element to the list of words, with Dosa and Sambar being included, as well as Daal as an alternative spelling of Dal. Some regional dialect words are also in, such as Frape from the South West, meaning tightly bound, or Marra, a mate in Northern England. There were also some I had not heard before which simply made me laugh, such as Hangry, meaning irritable because you haven’t eaten, a state I am perpetually in, or Photobomb, which means to go into the background of somebody’s photo without realising it.

It really struck me though how useful this whole enterprise has been. I was frankly surprised to see some of the words and usages included for the first time, such as Faff as a noun, meaning something is a bit awkward to do, or Oojamaflip, a term for something when you can’t quite remember what it is. It’s a reminder that it does take a long time for terms to make it to the dictionary.

Nevertheless, Collins’ efforts to let the world at large add to the dictionary-making process is to be applauded. This first tranche of words helps its online dictionary get bang up to date. With the initiative remaining in place, it will be in pole position to add words as soon as they gain some currency and will surely help the company reflect English as it is spoken today.

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New Words Which are not Ridic

Posted on September 3, 2012 | 2 Comments

The tail end of summer is always a fertile time for lovers of new words. ‘Tis the season of dictionary updates, and as each publisher puts out their own list of additions, so column inches and discussions ensue about their relative merits as English vocabulary enjoys a brief moment in the media spotlight.

Now, as Wordability prepares to enter its second year (a year already, amazing!), I have decided to buck my usual trend and not bemoan the length of time it takes for established words to gain acceptance. And it would be easy. After all, OED online has finally recognised Tweeps, a person’s Twitter followers, a word which while recent has certainly gained enough credibility over the last couple of years to have deserved official recognition before now. Meanwhile in the States, Merriam-Webster has included sexting and gastropub for the first time, words that have been around for some time.

No, what has bothered me about this particular round of coverage is the reaction of some commentators and in discussion pages about some of the words which have been included. The OED’s acceptance of Ridic and Mwahahaha, Chambers adding Glamping and Defriend to a section of its thesaurus - words such as these have seen the language pedants roll up their sleeves and go to work.

The curmudgeons argue that such words defile the English language, that its purity and beauty is somehow soiled by these trendy new terms as they gain usage and then acceptance. And of course, everybody who gives this opinion completely misses the point.

Because English is not a static museum piece, it is not a thing put into a book to be learnt as it is. No, it is a beautifully evolving stream, which is allowed to constantly change and grow to truly reflect how its speakers use it. Its incredible flexibility is one of the principal reasons behind its success as a global tongue, and not acknowledging this is simply not getting it. It is vital for dictionary makers to add new words as they become popular and embedded, and not listen to the luddites who would still speak like Shakespeare.

And people may want to view the situation in China, where natural evolution of the language is not allowed. Commonly used English words and phrases have now been included in the latest edition of the Modern Chinese Dictionary, and scholars have argued that Chinese law itself has been broken by the move.

Pedants in the English-speaking world may think they want a language which doesn’t change, and may believe they want dictionary makers to ignore the language that is actually spoken. But it is vital that lexicographers continue to reflect the language as it truly is, and that we all celebrate the fact that we live somewhere where they are allowed to do that.

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