Tag: OED

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.

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.

Laugh Out Loud at David Cameron

It says much about the British public that despite Rebekah Brooks’ hours of evidence to the Leveson Inquiry, one trivial detail is likely to be the major thing her appearance is remembered for.

That triviality is the revelation that Prime Minister David Cameron sent her a number of texts, many of which were finished LOL under the mistaken assumption that it meant Lots of Love.

From a Wordability point of view, it is a fascinating insight into how new words face a rocky road to general usage. LOL, the Laugh Out Loud acronym applied to many online utterances, gained full acceptance in 2011 when it was accepted as a word by the Oxford English Dictionary.

The Cameron error highlights the fact that many people can be aware of a new word and know that uttering it confers some kind of hipness on the user. But their inability to use it properly shows not only that they are not hip, but also emphasises that they are trying and failing in their attempts at coolness.

I personally never use LOL, and am happy to admit that for a long time, I didn’t actually know what the letters stood for. But that was irrelevant, because I knew what it actually meant because I had seen it used in context. Being exposed to its correct usage would make it impossible for anyone to misuse it. The Prime Minister’s mistake suggests he has no friends on Facebook.

Of course, the other thing about the revelation is that you are left wondering just how long Ms Brooks allowed Mr Cameron to act like a linguistic pillock before she finally told him the truth. And given the reaction that the news has got, he may now be searching for some new acronyms with which to finish any future texts to his famous friend.

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.

A Feast of Lexicography

It’s been a fertile few weeks for lovers of new words. The Oxford English Dictionary has just issued its quarterly update, with details of its newest entries. This follows hot on the heels of new editions of two concise dictionaries, both of which achieved media coverage for their particular choice of trendy new word.

The OED has highlighed a number of the new words in its update. These include ambo, a member of an ambulance crew; kewl, an exagerrated version of cool; and Britcom, a British situation comedy.

What is interesting is how long it has taken for some words to actually be included in the OED. Wordability will always be interested in new word updates from dictionary publishers. But this blog will primarily be looking to pick up on new words and usages before they are finally legitimised by lexicographers, especially given how long this appears to take.

For example, the OED is now including stitch-up, which is of course the framing of an individual. It is, I’m sure, a word that most of us are familiar with. The OED even cites the first usage as 1980, making its 30-year wait hugely surprising. Zaatar, a middle eastern spice mix, has waited even longer and was first cited in 1917. A Zaatar stitch-up perhaps?

Also interesting are some of the words in the full list of newbies which are not highlighted by the editors. These include afterfeather, framboidal, house conventicle, picocell and take-no-shit. This week’s homework from Wordability is to find out the meaning of the above words and then put them into a coherent sentence. I expect many of you will find a suitable usage for the last word on this list in response.

Other dictionaries have recently put new words on bookshelves. Back in August, The Concise Oxford Dictionary celebrated its 100th anniversary with offerings such as mankini, jeggings, sexting and cyberbullying.

A week or so later, the new edition of Chambers Dictionary appeared, with words such as crowdsourcing, paywall and staycation, though interestingly, sexting did not pass the Chambers test, pointing to an interesting difference in criteria between rival dictionary editors.

But almost more eye-opening was the outpouring of nostalgia for words being removed from dictionaries. Oxford’s decision to discard cassette tape led to much online breast-beating as people pointed out that they were still using cassette tapes, and that despite CDs, MP3s and others, cassettes were still a valid way to listen to music.

But even more bizarre was the reaction to an announcement from Collins. Collins has not even released its new dictionary but did take the opportunity of the flurry of dictionary news to announce that some words would not be making the cut for its next edition later this year.

There seemed to be particular sadness over the loss of charabanc, a mode of horse-drawn transport which is clearly outdated but seemed to affect people disproportionately by its departure.

I don’t think this reaction was anything to do with a group of disenfranchised charabanc drivers fighting back. It seemed instead to point to a wistfulness for a golden age and an acknowledgement that former, more innocent times have long since passed.

Having said that, any declaration that a word is going out of date is clearly a challenge for hacks everywhere. Within days, the Sun, writing about Arsenal, said: “The night they lived to fight another day when, at one time, the whole out-of-control charabanc seemed to be heading for the rocks below.”

Charabanc may yet be saddling up for a reprieve.