Live English
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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 Stephen Bullon on April 30, 2012
One of the interesting things about English, and other languages too, for that matter, is that a relatively small number of words account for a large percentage of everything we read or hear (or say or write). The most frequent 100 words account for about 45%, and the most frequent 7,500 account for about 90%. [...]
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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 Stephen Bullon on April 02, 2012
Here in Britain, we’ve been advised by a government minister to keep a jerrycan of petrol in our garages as a precaution against a proposed strike by the drivers of petrol tankers which threatens to leave most of our petrol stations dry. A jerrycan is a kind of container for petrol, water, or other liquids, [...]
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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 Liz Potter on March 27, 2012
When he’s a grown man who works in a stable, would seem to be the answer. The Macmillan English Dictionary defines a lad as: ‘a boy or a young man’ or ‘a man who does things thought to be typical of young men, for example drinking a lot of alcohol…’ Put the word stable in [...]
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