Author Archive
-
Posted by Michael Rundell on January 18, 2010
Sinead – one of the commenters on Roisin Muldoon’s recent blog – speculated that the Irish-English verb ‘to give out’ (to talk disapprovingly or tell someone off) may be a direct translation of a similar verb in Irish (the Gaelic language of Ireland). This happens a lot when languages co-exist, and Irish-English borrows not only [...]
Read the full article
-
Posted by Michael Rundell on January 06, 2010
Language can be divisive. Some people are relaxed about the way it keeps on changing, but others see change as decline. For them, English is ‘going to the dogs’, standards are falling, and the language is being overwhelmed by ‘slang’ and (even worse) ‘horrible Americanisms’. None of this is new. Samuel Johnson harked back to [...]
Read the full article -
Posted by Michael Rundell on November 30, 2009
One of our readers – Trauma Queen – made a good point about global Englishes when commenting on Sarah McKeown’s recent blog about the expression “I’m lovin’ it”. Her question: Who decides what is “good” or “correct” English when the way it is spoken differs from country to country? raises some tricky issues about the [...]
Read the full article -
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 [...]
Read the full article -
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 [...]
Read the full article -
Posted by Michael Rundell on September 17, 2009
When you think of the changes English has undergone in just the last ten years, a figure like Samuel Johnson – whose 300th birthday we celebrate on Friday 18th September – may seem remote from contemporary concerns. Everyone enjoys resurrecting Johnson’s more outlandish or amusing definitions, and it’s true that he wasn’t above having the [...]
Read the full article -
Posted by Michael Rundell on September 14, 2009
We need a new definition for celebrity. None of the dictionaries I’ve looked at (ours included) really does justice to the way the word is used nowadays. Celebrity has become a far more common word in the last 20 years or so: statistics show that its frequency has more than doubled since 1990, its use [...]
Read the full article -
Posted by Michael Rundell on August 05, 2009
Some people get very upset about nouns being used as verbs. A recent row in the press centred on the verbal use of medal (How many of their athletes were medalled at the last Olympics?) but it turns out that this usage is at least as old as Thackeray. Which is hardly surprising, since forming [...]
Read the full article -
Posted by Michael Rundell on June 29, 2009
You would have thought there was no sensible person left who believed that split infinitives were a crime to be avoided at all costs. But apparently not. In the space of ten minutes – while reading the Saturday Review in last week’s Guardian – I came across two clumsy sentences. In both cases, the culprit [...]
Read the full article -
Posted by Michael Rundell on June 08, 2009
Why do we say that someone “turned round” (or turned around) and said something? It’s one of those expressions people seem to find deeply irritating, and the standard response to what is perceived as “sloppy” English is to imagine it is nothing more than a meaningless filler. I tend to take the opposite view: language [...]
Read the full article
