Category: Dictionaries

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

Nerds Fight Back in Sweden

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.

Misogyny Fuels Australian Debate

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.

Amazeballs to Zhoosh: Collins’ First Fruits

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.

New Words Which are not Ridic

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.

Collins Makes The Dictionary Democratic

A new initative by Collins dictionaries could change the way that dictionaries are compiled forever. The company is asking members of the public to submit words to be considered for future editions.

Submission is clearly not a guarantee of success – all suggested words are put through the same rigorous assessment that a word selected by an editor would then undergo. But the amount of coverage this story has received, together with the number of words being suggested, shows just how interested people are in the evolution of English and the new words that are constantly emerging.

It is also encouraging to see some of the words being suggested, with Wordability favourites such as omnishambles and Tebowing battling with cyberstalking, amazeballs and mantyhose for attention. At this stage, nobody knows how many of these will finally be accepted. But if they are, it will prove that the acceptance process is becoming as quick as it needs to be in the age of the internet.

The level of interest has been something of a surprise to Alex Brown, the head of digital at Harper Collins. Wordability spoke to him shortly after the launch of the What’s Your Word initiative, and during the conversation, the 2,000th word was submitted. It was prairiedogged, the feeling of helplessness that overtakes you when co-workers in neighbouring cubicles constantly pop their heads up to ask you trivial, silly or frivolous questions. It was subsequently rejected by editors.

Its rejection confirms that this is still serious dictionary-making, with the submission process the only part which has been opened up. Alex told me: “This isn’t Urban Dictionary. We still have a team of editors and researchers who moderate to see if the words meet the minimum level of criteria and we are not changing that as we see it as a strength. The site opens a window on that whole process.”

He said that while they expected to receive words from technology and social media, there have been some surprises. “We have been surprised by the number of regional dialect words, and some of them are difficult to find evidence of because they are spoken not written. The global nature has also been a surprise, with quite a lot of words from India, for example, which are concepts around religion or food.”

Alex said that What’s Your Word will now be a permanent feature of the Collins process. At the moment, words which are approved still have to wait a few weeks to receive their dictionary stripes, but in time, he would like to see that process made live.

One of the advantages of this process is that words can now reach dictionaries quicker. I have often bemoaned how slow the Oxford English Dictionary is to accept new words, and while Collins will still have the final say, What’s Your Word will perform the vital process of recognising that language change itself has changed, and that the dictionary process needs to evolve along with that.

OED Feels the Bogan Backlash

The Oxford English Dictionary has never worried about justifying the length of time it takes for words to be accorded official status in one of their quarterly updates. Wordability has consistently argued that some words take a bewilderingly long time to get recognition, and in its latest update, editor John Simpson espouses the value of watching and waiting as words bed down.

This of course is all very well, but if a word has been around since the 1980s before it is finally recognised, is that not a bit too long? It is especially lengthy when that word is so well established that people then take issue with the definition.

So it is with Bogan, a word from down under which has been defined in the new OED update as a boringly conventional or old-fashioned person or an uncouth or uncultured person.

It is the “uncultured” reference that has caused controversy. Many people in Australia and New Zealand are happy to refer to themselves as bogans, on the understanding that it refers to heavy metal-listening, jeans and black T-shirt-wearing beer drinking types. They argue that they are not “uncultured”, just different cultured. Dave Snell, an offended bogan, has even completed a PhD on bogan culture.

All of this proves yet again that many of the new words touted by the OED are not new at all. If they are as old as this one, then their inclusion risks causing controversy because they are so well established that their official definition is queried.

Actually, Wordability is much more interested in a recent blog about words that Oxford experts are tracking, albeit that they are not yet officially recognised. These include squoob, a conflation of squeezed and boob and referring to a prominent cleavage protruding from a tight bodice, and phablet, which combines phone and tablet.

Will these appear in the official OED list any time soon? Undoubtedly not. But it’s word like these, if they gain any kind of regular usage, which will continue to appear on Wordability.

Roll Your Eyes at Tardy Swift Boats

Heard of eye rolling, green technology and swift boats? Of course you have. They’ve been around for years. Or maybe not. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – I don’t quite get the Oxford English Dictionary’s policy for their quarterly updates.

In their latest announcement, many of the words now added to the online Oxford English Dictionary seem reassuringly familiar, and not typical of new words at all. The definition for Swift Boat even cites its appearance in the 2004 US Election as the time it came into public consciousness.

Now I know that the OED policy states that words have to have been used for a certain length of time and in a sufficient variety of places for inclusion in the dictionary, and as the official arbiter of language, this is clearly the right policy. The OED is the ultimate record of language, and is clearly not going to validate some of the words which appear fleetingly and then disappear again almost without trace.

But I find the examples above bizarre, as they are all words which have been common for some time, and if I said I had been rolling my eyes over the situation, nobody would have struggled to understand me. It just strikes me that when it is being trumpeted that new words have been added to a dictionary, there should be something vaguely novel about them.

In fact, the recent financial buzz phrases, such as Robin Hood Tax and Debt Ceiling, seem to have been accepted at just the right time. It feels like they have been around for just short enough that their welcome to the OED fraternity is perfectly timed. More of the same, please.

My favourite word on the list was one I was unfamiliar with. A minimoon is a short break taken by a married couple, typically as a prelude to a longer holiday. I probably should have known it. It’s been around since the 1970s. So not so new after all.

Cyberchondria and Babe Magnets Come of Age

I read about a word this week and got very excited about writing about it. An article in London’s Evening Standard, about people self-diagnosing themselves on the internet, started with the line: “I have learned a new word this week: cyberchondria”.

Fantastic, I thought, your new word must be my new word, and what a great word it is. Except that the writer and I were both behind the times.

It turns out that cyberchondria has been around since the turn of the century. It appears to have debuted in 2001, with the BBC website writing about it, while by 2003 it had been discussed in The British Medical Journal.

So why am I writing about it, I hear you ask. You just write about brand new words and usages, and this is patently not new, so go and find something else. Well that’s true, but it seems that the wheels of the Oxford English Dictionary move a great deal slower than the wheels of Wordability.

I am writing about it because the OED has just announced the details of the latest quarterly update to its online dictionary, and guess what its headline is. Correct! Cyberchondriac has now been added to the dictionary.

Now I know that the OED has specific criteria for including a word in its dictionary, relating to length of time, frequency and breadth of use and an almost unquantifiable sense of currency, meaning that people don’t have to explain it when they use it. But I do wonder whether they are sometimes taking a bit too long to introduce things.

Wordability has recently written about Tebowing and Linsanity, both of which are already recognised by the Global Language Monitor as words because of their massive usage. Surely then, they should have been included in this OED update as they clearly meet all the criteria required for a new word, as discussed above. But they are not yet there, and it is impossible to say how long it might take for them to appear. And I will also be keeping an eye out for Ineptocracy, which is by some distance the most searched term on Wordability.

Cyberchondria is one of a number of words that I feel should have been included long ago. Others include: babe magnet, a man who is very attractive to women; vodcast, in effect a video podcast; and unspellable, which sounds like it has been around forever.

The OED is the ultimate arbiter of language and of course it has to be absolutely certain about a word’s validity before it will include it. Its quarterly updates allow it to respond to changes in language on an ongoing basis. But the speed with with words are consistently exploding around the world makes me think that their road to official acceptance is going to have to become shorter.

A Word of the Year You Have Never Heard Of

Hot on the heels of the Oxford Dictionary announcement that ‘Squeezed Middle’ was the word of the year, the dictionary.com website has made its own announcement.

The Oxford decision to go with a word that was actually two words caused some controversy.  So the online dictionary’s decision to go with a word that nobody has ever heard of might turn out to be equally perplexing.

Their approach was to choose a word that has existed for some time but has resonance in relation to the events of the last 12 months, rather than a new word or usage from 2011.

So it is back to 1645 for this year’s word of the year – the verb Tergiversate.

It means ‘to change repeatedly one’s attitude or opinions with respect to a cause or subject’, and editors felt that it was associated with rapidly changing times and periods of tumult, thus perfectly encapsulating the ups and downs of this year.

While I understand this approach, to me this doesn’t seem in keeping with the concept of a word of the year. I am much more in favour of a new word from the previous 12 months that captures a mood or a trend, rather than simply finding a word from the past that does that same job. You wouldn’t award an Oscar to a film from the 1930s just because it said something about the state of modern society better than any contemporary movie.

I actually wish the editors had chosen another one of the words under consideration, ‘zugzwang’, a chess term in which a player is limited to moves that either cost pieces or damage their position, just because I like the sound of it. Had they done that, then maybe I would tergiversate my view of their decision.

Squeezed Middle Named Word Of The Year

Oxford Dictionaries has announced its word of the year, and it is a true reflection of British society over the last 12 months.

“Squeezed Middle”, a term coined by Labour leader Ed Miliband to describe the large portion of society most affected by Government cuts and the economic downturn, has won the accolade in both the UK and the USA, which normally selects a different word.

Some press reports have complained about the fact that the winner of word of the year is a phrase, but compound nouns have distinct meanings and therefore act like words, so that argument is a red herring. Instead, we should focus on just what this year’s winner and runners-up say about the state of the country today.

Wordability has frequently mentioned that new words and usages come from all sides, with technology a particularly rich vein, though music, sport and television also contribute their fair share of neologisms.

But squeezed middle comes straight from news reporting and shows that this year, minds have been concentrated on serious issues. This is reflected by the other words on the shortlist, which are other brand new words, new usages of existing words or words gaining particular prominence: Arab Spring, describing events in the Middle East earlier this year; Occupy, the movement to occupy prominent buildings as a protest over perceived economic injustice; Phone Hacking, the much-publicised practice of intercepting people’s phone messages; Hacktivism, gaining unauthorised access to networks for political reasons; and Sodcasting, the only non-newsworthy item on the shortlist and the act of playing music through your mobile phone in a public place.

What this list shows us is the power of the media and the way that when particular stories start to grow and gain coverage, they have to have a neat word to encapsulate their essence. Coining the right one can help to define the argument and create a perception in people’s minds about what the story is about. The internet and 24-hour news need these words and then become the perfect vehicles for disseminating this.

As well as really getting to the heart of what the economic crisis means for millions of people, I think there is another reason why squeezed middle works so well. It sounds like it always existed. When you hear the phrase, you assume it is a demographic description that has been used for eternity, rather than a phrase of the times, and this slightly timeless quality probably explains why it has stuck.

As for my word of the year? Well, since this blog has only been operating for a short time, I can suggest Doing a Tevez, Shovel-Ready and Haircut as possible candidates. But of course, there can only be one winner, and I look forward to seeing it in every dictionary next year. For me, the word of the year for 2011 is of course Wordability.