Author Archive
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Posted by Sharon Creese on October 14, 2010
I notice that ‘inbox’ has entered the Open Dictionary, as a verb meaning ‘to send someone a private message in Facebook’. In an earlier post, I talked about how I quite like the practice of ‘verbing’, as it reflects the dynamic nature of society, but I have to say that this one grates on me. [...]
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Posted by Sharon Creese on October 14, 2010
Do you ever wonder where words and phrases come from? For example, in the UK, we might describe a machine or device as ‘a bit Heath Robinson’ if it seems over-the-top or bizarrely designed, given the intended purpose, but why does that particular characteristic make it ‘Heath Robinson’? Well, Heath Robinson was a British artist [...]
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Posted by Sharon Creese on October 13, 2010
HRT…in the UK, this acronym commonly stands for hormone replacement therapy, a common treatment for women undergoing the menopause. Linguistically however, HRT stands for high-rising terminal. This is the questioning intonation that appears at the end of a sentence, whether it is a question or not. This pronunciation habit seems particularly prevalent amongst younger people in the [...]
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Posted by Sharon Creese on October 12, 2010
There have been a couple of particularly interesting entries into the Open Dictionary recently; new words that have an element of negativity (either in that they represent a negative attitude, or they indicate not doing something). The first is un-fanmail – letters or e-mails complaining about a book or cinema/theatre production. This, as you might [...]
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Posted by Sharon Creese on October 11, 2010
Sounding natural and fluent when talking about time can be a bit of a challenge, not least because conventions vary depending on where you are. If you’re in the US and talking about the previous Saturday, you might well say this past Saturday, but you wouldn’t say that in the UK: here it would be [...]
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Posted by Sharon Creese on October 08, 2010
This article, highlighted in a recent Language and words in the news, made me both smile and grimace at the same time. I was once lucky enough to swim with dolphins, and they seemed to be endlessly entertained by the sound of the dial on my dive watch going round (the movable dial allows you [...]
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Posted by Sharon Creese on October 07, 2010
The Open Dictionary has featured a couple of interesting entries recently, not least of which is treggings. Treggings are ‘leggings which are made of stretchy but very opaque fabric to resemble wool, corduroy, leather or riding pants’. The word obviously comes from the mix of ‘trousers’ and ‘leggings’. What’s interesting, though, is that leggings originally [...]
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Posted by Sharon Creese on October 05, 2010
Last time I was talking about how recognising the core elements of a word can help students decipher new words containing the same elements.To illustrate, I posed a few examples: obesophobia bibliophobia microphobia zoophobia dentophobia Hopefully, you’ll have recognised obes from ‘obesity‘, and worked out that obesophobia is the fear of getting fat. Biblio links [...]
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Posted by Sharon Creese on September 30, 2010
When you know the word for something (e.g. obesity), and then see another word that contains the same core elements, it can be a huge help in working out the meaning of the new word, even if, at first glance, it looks really daunting. Take, for example, the many different types of phobia that exist. [...]
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Posted by Sharon Creese on September 29, 2010
What is the future of the English language, I wonder? As arguably the pre-eminent linguistic force on the globe, where does it go from here? David Crystal and Stephen Fry discussed the future of English in a recent BBC Radio 4 programme, whilst language experts have been meeting to discuss the fate of the world’s [...]
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