language and words in the news
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Posted by Liz Potter on February 10, 2012
This post contains a selection of links related to language and words in the news. These can be items from the latest news, blog posts or interesting websites related to global English, language change, education in general, and language learning and teaching in particular. Feel free to contact us if you would like to submit [...]
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Posted by Michael Rundell on February 08, 2012
In the previous post on this topic, we looked at the criteria traditionally applied by dictionary-makers when considering new words for inclusion. The question is as old as lexicography itself. When he wrote his Plan of an English Dictionary in 1747, Dr Johnson noted that it is ‘not easy to determine by what rule of [...]
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Posted by Stephen Bullon on January 30, 2012
Madonna’s recent moonlighting stint as a dictionaries marketing executive is still paying dividends: another thousand people have looked up reductive since we discussed it last Monday, and it’s been the single most looked up word for the last two weeks. If you remember, Madge had said of a Lady Gaga song: “When I heard it [...]
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Posted by Orin Hargraves on January 30, 2012
Humans never outgrow a fascination with new playthings, but after a certain age it is unseemly and unrealistic to expect a steady stream of surprise gifts from doting parents, aunts, uncles, and grandparents. One consolation for this loss is new words: clever coinages come along all the time to supply our craving for novelty. A [...]
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Posted by Kati Sule on January 27, 2012
This post contains a selection of links related to language and words in the news. These can be items from the latest news, blog posts or interesting websites related to global English, language change, education in general, and language learning and teaching in particular. Feel free to contact us if you would like to submit [...]
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Posted by Stan Carey on January 23, 2012
Learning a rule or convention in language gives people a secure footing in an area of usage. When the convention is ignored or challenged, this can undermine the pocket of security and offend people’s sense of what is proper and necessary. This might help explain the levels of anxiety and outrage we see when, for [...]
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Posted by Stephen Bullon on January 23, 2012
In 2011, there were 252 searches for the word reductive in the Macmillan Dictionary. So in the 7 days from 13th to 19th January inclusive, we would have expected to see 5. In fact, we had well over 2,000 individual searches for the word reductive. The reason, it would appear, was a comment made by [...]
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Posted by Kati Sule on January 20, 2012
This post contains a selection of links related to language and words in the news. These can be items from the latest news, blog posts or interesting websites related to global English, language change, education in general, and language learning and teaching in particular. Feel free to contact us if you would like to submit [...]
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Posted by Michael Rundell on January 18, 2012
The Macmillan Dictionary got a mention in The Guardian yesterday, when Jane Martinson pondered the use of the word simper. A fellow journalist (male) had tweeted about a lawyer (female) ‘simpering’ at a witness (male) in the ongoing Leveson Inquiry. (The inquiry was set up in the wake of revelations that News International journalists had [...]
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Posted by Stephen Bullon on January 16, 2012
The weekly roundup on Friday carries a link to a story about the renaming of a well-known chain of British bookstores. It’s Farewell to Waterstones’s and Hello to Waterstones. Losing an apostrophe won’t make any difference to the pronunciation, but nonetheless the name change has been greeted with some outrage by some of the more [...]
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