OMG and others
From Oxford University Press, nine words that are older than you might think. Or eight words and one acronym.
Domestic comedy
“I can’t believe I used the word moneys .”
The mere fact
The deaths of civilians in war ought never to be considered a mere fact.
Craft vogue
When everything from poems to pot to munchies is crafted, it’s time to say “vogue word” and move on.
Word of the day: guarantor
What’s wrong with “patient” ?
A plumbing tale
“Don’t use hydrochloric acid. It eats hell out of pipes.”
Word of the day: Waldeinsamkeit
A (sort of) untranslatable word.
Word of the day: zucchini
Aka courgette.
Word of the day: coster
“Remember her in that coster song, Mother? It went round the world, that did.”
Oliver Sacks (1933–2015)
“Language, that most human invention, can enable what, in principle, should not be possible. It can allow all of us, even the congenitally blind, to see with another person’s eyes.”
Playing policy
Meaning “the numbers.”
On the news
“ . . . they’ll sell less iPhones.”
The -thon, dancing and walking
Mencken writes great footnotes.
A word from the Danish
Hygge.
A colon followed by a dash
There’s a a name for it.
Word of the day: gam
From Moby-Dick.
Quoggy
From Melville.
Word of the day: gazype
“Hey, look, you say this is on the up-and-up? Well, I don’t want to spit in no cop’s eye. If you’re hooked up with this, there's some kind of a gazype in it.”
The Allusionist, a podcast
A fortnightly podcast about language.
A useful made-up word
Lapsonym.
Doff, don
Could the verbs doff and don be related to the prepositions off and on ?
Joseph Mitchell and small words
“I’ll search endlessly for the right small words of a few syllables that hold something up.”
The age of spinach
Baby, teen.
Word of the day: eremite
Someone piped up: “What’s Eremite?” And the teacher explained that it was an element Keats had discovered.
Opt out is not a transitive verb
“She opted her third-grade son out of the tests.”
Word of the day: lane duck
“The word of the day is one of my recent invention.”
The honorific Mx
The gender-neutral title Mx may be joining the honorifics Miss , Mr , Mrs and Ms in the Oxford English Dictionary.
Word of the Day: epistling
“Heere’s a packet of Epistling, as bigge as a Packe of Woollen cloth.”
Blond and blonde
Merrill Perlman explains the difference, if there is one.
Artisan, no
Indiscriminate and cynical use has made artisan and artisanal into worsened words.