arvo, n. bowyang, n. brush, n.5 Buckley’s, n. bung, adj.2 bushy, n chook, n. chook, int. chookie, n. cobber,  n.2 cobber,  v. compo,  n.2 derry,  n.2 dill, n.6 dinky-di, adj. Enzed, n. Enzedder, n. grouse, adj. haere mai, n. hangi, n. Hauhau, n. hei-tiki, n. hinaki, n. Hokonui, n. hoot, n.2 hori, n. kai, n. kainga, n. kaitaka, n. kapai, int., adj., and adv. karakia, n. karakia, v. karanga, n. kero,  n. kia ora, int and n. kinaki, n. kit, n.11 ko, n.1 kohua, n. konaki, n. kopa Maori, n. korero, n. kuri, n. lamington, n. sheila, n. smoko, n. sook, n.2 sooky, adj. and n ..read more

In the late 19th century, James Murray’s inclusion of transcriptions in A New English Dictionary embedded the descriptivist stance that OED’s pronunciations editors emulate and hold dear today. Pronunciations were never intended to show how a word ‘should’ be articulated by prescribing the pronunciation of a particular social group to be the ‘acceptable’ and therefore ‘correct’ form. To Murray, pronunciations were essential as they sought to represent ‘the actual living form or forms of a word, that is, the word itself, of which the current spelling is only a symbolization’ (Vol. I, p.xxiv). E ..read more

In her memoir Single Journey Only, Ursula Owen, one of the founding directors of Virago Press, describes the feelings evoked by the name of the new feminist publishing venture: It’s hard to remember how disturbing and unmarketable feminism was to many people in the early Seventies. To some the name Virago, chosen by Carmen [Callil] and Rosie Boycott, was a problem at first: hardly anyone knew the original meaning—a man-like or heroic woman—or saw the irony. Anthony Burgess had particular problems with us. Here he is in 1981 reviewing the remarkable stream of consciousness novel Pilgrimage by ..read more

The distinction between noun and verb is one of the most fundamental features of human language, and this is reflected in the OED’s organizational principles. The process whereby one part of speech is derived from the other, but without adding a suffix or making any other alteration to the original form, is known variously as conversion or zero derivation. In OED, generally, if a noun has ended up being used as an adjective, or an adjective as an adverb, then these parts of speech are treated under the same headword, as in the case of BLUE adj. & n., EAST adv., adj., & n.1, and innumer ..read more

ae, adv. (and n.) after-ball, adj., and n. bitzer, n. chur, int. droppie, n. e hoa, n. e hoa ma, n. enrol | enroll, v. flat stick, adv., and adj. hooning, n. hoonish, adj. iwi, n. kaitiaki, n. kaumatua, n. kaupapa, n. kehua, n. Kiwiness, n. koha, n. korero, v. kuia, n. maunga, n. moko kauae, n. Pai Marire, n. and adj. pepeha, n. powhiri, n. rahui, n. rangatahi, n. rangatiratanga, n. reo, n. rohe, n. standing place, n. stuffed, adj. Tagata Pasifika, n. taihoa, v. tamaiti, n. tamariki, n. tatau, n. tino rangatiratanga, n. tuakana, n. turangawaewae, n. wahine toa, n. wairua, n. waka ama, n. whana ..read more

Readers may be pleased to hear that an entry for antigram is being published in the OED for the first time. For those not familiar, an antigram is an anagram that has an opposite or contradictory meaning to the original word or phrase; the quotations we’ve chosen give the examples of ‘funeral’ / ‘real fun’, and ‘honestly’ / ‘on the sly’. An anagram of ‘dictionary’ is ‘idiocy rant’, which I hope counts as an antigram. Ranting and idiocy are frowned on at Great Clarendon Street, rest assured. To prove this, let’s look at our sober and measured approach to new additions as part of the revision of ..read more

Ever wondered what it’s like to work for the world’s leading dictionary publisher? Every year Oxford Languages runs a summer placement to give two people a taste of the work we do. You’ll be able to find out how to apply on this page when applications open. What does it involve? Although we run this placement every year, each one is unique with varied and fascinating projects for you to work on. Some of the projects our previous interns have worked on included: Working on the Oxford Sentence Dictionary and the Oxford Dictionary of English, adding new example sentences, improving existing cont ..read more

When: 23 March; 17:00 GMT (UTC+0) / 13:00 EDT (UTC-4) / 10:00 PDT (UTC-7) The Oxford Dictionary of African American English (ODAAE), a joint project of Oxford Languages (Oxford University Press) and Harvard University’s Hutchins Center for African & African American Research, is now well underway, and the first 100 entries have recently been completed. Join some project team members for a presentation of the project’s progress, followed by a live Q&A session. Agenda: • Where we are one year into the project • How did we get here? The roles people played in unco ..read more

What is Indian English, and who speaks it? English is an official language in India, and 2011 census data suggests that there are around 130 million speakers. There is no single ‘Indian English’ variety. As a second (or third or fourth) language in India, English is spoken in a range of different ways, influenced by regional and social variation and also by one or more of the 200+ native Indo-Aryan, Dravidian, Austro-Asiatic and Tibeto-Burman languages. English is spoken by the most highly educated but also by those with little formal education, and at all points along the continuum between. W ..read more

“I had some lovely andouillette /ˌɒndwɪˈɛt/,” said Charlie. “You mean /ɑ̃dujɛt/,” replied Sam. Do you side with Charlie or Sam? English dictionaries have wrestled for over 100 years with how to represent the pronunciations of words loaned from other languages, evaluating the extent to which each word is naturalized. An English speaker who is familiar with French, and knows that andouillette is a French word, might use a French pronunciation while otherwise speaking English. This reflects a process called code-switching. On the other hand, some borrowed words, for example Italian pasta dishes ..read more