Archive for November, 2009
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Posted by Laine Redpath Cole on November 16, 2009
In our weekly roundup a couple of weeks ago there was a link to a pretty fascinating article entitled: Babies May Pick Up Language Cues in the Womb (with a title that thorough, who needs an article?!). Anyway. “The finding suggests that newborns just a few days old may already be trying to imitate the [...]
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Posted by Jonathan Cole on November 13, 2009
This post contains a weekly selection of links related to language and words in the news. These can be items from the latest news, blog posts or interesting websites related to global English and language change. Please contact us if you would like to submit a link for us to include. Global English No foreign [...]
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Posted by Michael Rundell on November 12, 2009
One of the downsides of being in the dictionary business is that most people have a completely erroneous idea of what we do. A recent article in the Times ticked all the boxes in its caricature of the lexicographer: old, “boffinish” and hopelessly outmoded (still working with card indexes, apparently), we are nevertheless seen as [...]
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Posted by Kati Sule on November 11, 2009
Paraskevidekatriaphobia is the new BuzzWord this week on Macmillan Dictionary. ‘Paraskevi… what?’ you ask. Knowing a bit of Greek and a bit about word formation will help you get to the end of this word. The term paraskevidekatriaphobia is based on the Greek words paraskevi (‘Friday’) and dekatria (‘thirteen’) with -phobia as a suffix to [...]
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Posted by Stephen Bullon on November 10, 2009
There are a number of words in English which end with the consonant m followed by the consonant n. Words like hymn, condemn, solemn. We don’t pronounce the n so the words are pronounced /hɪm/, /kənˈdem/, and /ˈsɒləm/. When they form derived words, such as hymnal, condemnation, or solemnity, then the letter n becomes pronounced: [...]
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Posted by Jonathan Cole on November 06, 2009
This post contains a weekly selection of links related to language and words in the news. These can be items from the latest news, blog posts or interesting websites related to global English and language change. Please contact us if you would like to submit a link for us to include. Global English Can you [...]
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Posted by Jeremy Bale on November 05, 2009
English loves short, direct, expressive, onomatopoeic words, of Germanic origin, with multiple meanings – like bang, crash, smash and whoosh. They are a fertile source of slang, and a popular word can – confusingly – acquire different meanings. A topical example is banger and three of its meanings are given below: Banger 1 Bonfire Night [...]
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Posted by Michael Rundell on November 04, 2009
The sad news that Chambers Dictionary is about to lose its lexicographic staff prompted a sympathetic article in the Times. Its author, Allan Brown, contrasted the efforts of Internet dictionaries (“pop-cultural hogwash”) with what he regarded as the work of “proper” lexicographers (“we know that our tongue is safe in their hands”). Very nice of [...]
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Posted by Laine Redpath Cole on November 03, 2009
I wear pants and my daughter wears trousers. Ha! You see now, depending on where your familiarity lies you will have either me in my underwear or my daughter in a tweed three-piece suit with a monocle in her eye … sort of. Pants in BE (British English) = underwear. Pants in AE (American English) [...]
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Posted by Kati Sule on November 02, 2009
Pseudocide is the new BuzzWord this week on Macmillan Dictionary. The word, formed from a combination of adjective/prefix pseudo (meaning ‘not genuine’) and suffix –cide (denoting the act of killing), describes the act of faking your own death because you want to start a new life. The concept is not terribly new. You’ll recall the [...]
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