Author Archive
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Posted by Laine Redpath Cole on May 10, 2012
We are constantly monitoring the language to ensure that we keep an up-to-date record. You can be a part of this enterprise by suggesting a word for our Open Dictionary. Every Thursday Laine Redpath-Cole picks a new entry and goes on about it for a bit. This week’s word is: gender reveal (noun) the practice [...]
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Posted by Laine Redpath Cole on May 02, 2012
This post is published in the ‘Live English’ channel which provides content for our Global English crowd: international users of English. Every month we ask our contributing bloggers a question about English and its quirks. The last question was about politeness and April’s question was about synonyms. What’s your favourite synonym and why? Personally, I [...]
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Posted by Laine Redpath Cole on April 26, 2012
We are constantly monitoring the language to ensure that we keep an up-to-date record. You can be a part of this enterprise by suggesting a word for our Open Dictionary. Every Thursday Laine Redpath-Cole picks a new entry and goes on about it for a bit. This week’s word is: hat-tip (noun) an acknowledgement by [...]
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Posted by Laine Redpath Cole on April 19, 2012
milquetoast (noun) a man who is timid and unassertive The lack of masculine courage and willpower is quickly turning America’s men into milquetoasts. Where are the Patrick Henrys, the George Pattons, the Teddy Roosevelts, the Andy Jacksons, or the Harry Trumans today? (Submitted from the United Kingdom) My son is currently obsessed with eating food [...]
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Posted by Laine Redpath Cole on April 12, 2012
Facebooking (noun) doing any activity on FB social network: e.g. Videos, Photoshop, Chat, posts In my free time I like reading , jogging and Facebooking. (Submitted by Mara Rufino from Italy) I got into a muddle recently when trying to explain to someone how I would be communicating some or other bit of information with [...]
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Posted by Laine Redpath Cole on April 05, 2012
spanner (noun) an offensive word for a stupid person I never had any great love for Enid Blyton because the children in her books were always such insufferable spanners. (Submitted from the United Kingdom) It’s always good to learn a new word for “stupid”. Not that this one is particularly new – whenever there has [...]
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Posted by Laine Redpath Cole on March 29, 2012
Robin Hood tax (noun) a very small (0.05%) tax on every speculative financial transaction made by banks; also called Tobin tax The Robin Hood Tax is designed to hit only speculative, “casino” trading and not the high street banks used by the public. (Submitted from the United Kingdom) It’s been a taxing past few weeks [...]
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Posted by Laine Redpath Cole on March 19, 2012
obvs (adverb) a slang way of saying obviously I mean, obvs everyone has played their part, even Anya, but London is so back? (Submitted from the UK) Look, obvs this is totes a fad. And that’s fine, it’s amaze and all that. But what troubles me about this entry is that I totes don’t know [...]
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Posted by Laine Redpath Cole on March 12, 2012
This post is published in the ‘Live English’ channel which provides content for our Global English crowd: international users of English. Many things are lost in translation between one culture and another, using English as the lingua franca. Over the year we’ll ask questions that in some way pertain to translation and understanding. We did [...]
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Posted by Laine Redpath Cole on March 08, 2012
vocal fry (noun) a speech habit involving lowering the voice at the ends of words or sentences by slowly vibrating the vocal cords Pop singers, such as Britney Spears, slip vocal fry into their music as a way to reach low notes and add style. (Submitted from the United Kingdom) I spotted this phrase somewhere [...]
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