Latest OED Updates
Posted by: Rebecca Vnuk
Here’s news about the latest updates to the Oxford English Dictionary: a story in today’s Chicago Tribune, plus this press release from Oxford.
A new sense has been added to the verb heart in this update, and it may be the first English usage to develop via the medium of T-shirts and bumper-stickers. It originated as a humorous reference to logos featuring a picture of a heart as a symbol for the verb love, like that of the famous “I ♥ NY” tourism campaign. The earliest quote for this use, from 1984, uses the verb in “I heart my dog’s head”, a jokey play on bumper stickers declaring devotion to a particular breed of dog, featuring a heart and a picture of the relevant breed’s face; the humorous, spelled-out version itself became a popular bumper sticker. From these beginnings, heart has found a place in general speech and writing as a colloquial synonym for “to love”.
Food for thought…new additions to the OED
The ever expanding culinary delights of the English-speaking world continue to feed into the OED. This update sees such far-flung items as banh mi (also known as a Vietnamese sandwich), taquito (a crisp-fried Tex-Mex snack), and kleftiko (a Greek dish of slow-cooked lamb) added as new words. You will have to be careful that you don’t eat too much of this delicious food though, as you may end up with a muffin top – a new addition to the OED that means ‘a protuberance of flesh above the waistband of a tight pair of trousers’.
Tragic connections
Like lamentable, woeful, pathetic and other words for high-flown misery, tragic has come to be used in rather more mundane circumstances: the new OED entry shows the word being used to describe hairstyles and foodstuffs more likely to evoke cruel laughter than terror and pity. That familiar colloquial use of the adjective has been traced back to the mid-nineteenth century, but the OED aims to cover lexical developments throughout the English-speaking world. So this update also includes a much more recent use from Australian English of tragic used as a noun to mean ‘a boring or socially inept person, especially a person who pursues a solitary interest with obsessive dedication’. This sense of the term is first recorded in 1998, whereas the first sense of the word ‘of, pertaining or proper to tragedy as a branch of the drama’ can be traced as far back as 1563.
By using the OED online, you can trace the various senses of a word and discover how the first usage of a word has changed over time to acquire new meanings. The Historical Thesaurus of the OED, recently published online in the relaunched OED, will also allow you to find words connected in meaning throughout the history of the language in a way that has never before been possible. Look up tragic in the Thesaurus and enjoy a vista into the history of human misery, from the 11th century unmerry via doleful (13th century), mournful (c1425), cheerless (1567), luctiferous (1656), depressive (1727), Novemberish (1820), all the way up to down (1968).
R is finished
The update this month also marks the completion of the letter R. The biggest entry in this range is run and its derivatives, another example of a very short word which plays a significant role in the language (alongside, for example, make, pull, put, and red). The verb alone contains 645 senses (including phrases and other idiomatic uses), and is now the largest single entry in the dictionary, half as large again as the next-biggest word put (the verb).The Royal We
As if by careful planning the newly revised entries include royal with revisions of the senses royal wedding and royal marriage. ‘The royal we’ also got an update with new evidence showing it in use 14 years earlier than previously thought (1821), but perhaps rather puzzlingly in relation to Napoleon:1821 London Lit. Gaz. 28 July 470/1 The first use of the royal we by Buonaparte was in the appointment of his brother-in-law, Leclerc, to St. Domingo, in autumn 1801.
Finally, the addition of ego-surfing – the practice of searching on the internet for mentions of one’s own name or the name of one’s business, website, etc. – suggests that since 1995 some of us may have too much time on our hands!
So, why not invest some of your spare time in looking at the new additions on the OED website? Here are just a few examples:
New words:
dot bomb [noun] An Internet company which has become bankrupt or ceased to operate; a failed or unsuccessful dotcom.
fabless [adjective] is not, perhaps sadly, a denigrating term for someone who is insufficiently fabulous; the ‘fab’ comes not from fab adj., but from fabrication, and the word describes a technology company which does not do its own manufacturing.
non-dom [noun] short for non-domiciled, refers to a person living in a country in which he or she is not legally domiciled, usually in order to accrue tax advantages.
OMG [interjection] ‘Oh my God!’
singledom [noun] The state or condition of being unmarried or single
state-run [adjective] Operated or managed by the government of a country
tinfoil hat [noun] used especially with allusion to the belief that such a hat protects the wearer from mind control or surveillanceNew Senses:
to bang one’s head against a brick wall [phrase] To engage in a futile or fruitless effort
crack-up [noun] A nervous breakdown; an emotional collapse
to hedge one’s bets [phrase] to confront uncertain circumstances by pursuing multiple courses of action; to avoid committing oneself.
lashed [adjective] Drunk, intoxicated. See also on the lash at lash n.
lossless [adjective] Of data compression: without loss of information, allowing compressed data to be recovered perfectly by decompression; relating to or involving such compression. See also its opposite lossy.
scrunchy [adjective] Of a wrinkled or ruffled appearance; that may be scrunched up into a compact shape.
storming [adjective] Great, excellent, marvellous
tasty [adjective] Violent; combative; good at fighting. Also in extended use: skilled at a particular activity.New Subordinate Entries:
bogus caller [noun] a person who visits or telephones someone under false pretences
domestic goddess [noun] a woman likened to a goddess of the home
happy camper [noun] A content or satisfied person
ten (also three, five, etc.) second rule [noun] A notional rule which permits the retrieval and consumption of dropped food within the specified period of time.
yuck factor [noun] A feeling of horror, revulsion, or disgust generated by an idea, action of situation
