global English
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Posted by Laine Redpath Cole on December 27, 2011
We asked our regular blog contributors this final question in 2011: What word sums up 2011 for you and why? A brand-new word perhaps, or a well-used one throughout the year. Or perhaps a word that is particularly relevant to your experience of the year. Here are some of the answers to the question: It’s [...]
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Posted by Stan Carey on December 26, 2011
As the year ends, lexicographers and other word geeks traditionally put their heads together to choose or vote for a word of the year (WOTY). It’s not that simple, of course: different groups pick different words in different ways for different reasons. And it’s not always a word – other “vocabulary items” like phrases and [...]
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Posted by Kati Sule on December 23, 2011
Continuing the tradition established over the last couple of years, we are bringing you a list of blog posts published over here on the Macmillan Dictionary Blog which have been read and commented on most widely. Many of the selected 10 plus 2 additional posts still have ongoing conversations – have a read and join [...]
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Posted by Macmillan Dictionary on December 15, 2011
We’re delighted to launch the Macmillan Dictionary Love English Awards 2011 for best blog and best website about the English language. For details of the competition – how you can nominate and vote, and what the prizes are – check out this page over on Macmillan Dictionary. You can nominate your chosen website and/or blog [...]
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Posted by Stan Carey on December 12, 2011
“What prospects are there for us post the proposals to tackle banana fraud?” If you read this sentence at normal speed – and without my having drawn attention to it – you might have come briefly unstuck by thinking it has something to do with posting proposals. More careful examination shows that this is a [...]
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Posted by Kerry Maxwell on December 07, 2011
If I’ve had a tough day, there’s nothing that gives me greater pleasure than to curl up on the sofa watching telly, with a nice cuppa, a bar of choccy, maybe a few biccies too, and in case I feel the need for virtual company, my beloved lappy at my side … If you’re wondering [...]
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Posted by Stan Carey on December 05, 2011
In a comment to my post about confusing word pairs, I said that as a child I called a pen a “biro” and a vacuum cleaner a “hoover”. I knew the terms pen and vacuum cleaner, but only later did I learn that biro was named after the Hungarian inventor László Bíró, while hoover comes [...]
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Posted by Stan Carey on November 29, 2011
Sometimes nature reports come from unexpected sources. The Twitter account of Iarnród Éireann, Ireland’s national railway system, recently posted a picture of a visitor to their tracks, accompanied by the description: “Another prosecution as Frog flaunts trespassing laws!” The company is to be applauded for sharing wildlife photos with light-hearted humour, but its word choice [...]
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Posted by Laine Redpath Cole on November 28, 2011
Here is the third (following the first and second) in our monthly instalment of a question answered by our wonderful and ever-growing group of guest bloggers. The question we’ve asked this month was: What word in English is loaded with the most ‘class’ content for you? This was a bit of a difficult one to [...]
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Posted by Stan Carey on November 24, 2011
In its most familiar sense, jargon means specialised, often technical vocabulary associated with a particular type of work or area of activity. For example, there’s scientific jargon, medical jargon, airlinese, and business speak (the last of which I’ve written about before). Jargon is part of a sublanguage, and is subject to forces of change just [...]
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