We still say it – or at least the older generation does because they are still living in a world where sliced bread is a staple – for toast in the morning, for school lunches. Cutting a crusty loaf yourself is regarded, from that point of view, as some sort of throwback to Neanderthal times… Read more…
It is my feeling that mateship is a stronger and tougher relationship than friendship, having been forged in adversity.
The basic sense of friend is a person with whom you have achieved a degree of intimacy that is entirely unfettered by a sense of obligation. Friendship excludes the bonds of affection that are there between blood relations or between lovers. Read more…
The Macquarie Dictionary is proud to have international award-winning Australian author, Kate Grenville pen the foreword for the the Seventh Edition. You can get your copy of the Macquarie Dictionary Seventh Edition here or wherever good books are sold. Read more…
The pronunciation that bothers me most is one that I shouldn’t really be fussed about at all. It is the shift in the pronunciation of worry which used to rhyme with hurry but now rhymes, more and more, with sorry.
This word has had various forms and pronunciations in its history in the English language. It started out as an Old English word wyrgan meaning ‘to strangle’ (from which we got the idea of the dog worrying the sheep, from which we got the notion of feeling upset and anxious). Read more…
The Seventh Edition of the Macquarie Dictionary is here. It’s a beautifully packaged, incredibly useful work for anyone who yearns to know more about the Australian English language. You can get your copy of the Macquarie Dictionary Seventh Edition here or wherever good books are sold. Read more…
We are always on the lookout for new, emerging and interesting words to add to the Macquarie Dictionary. In a time of global instant communication, these words are popping up faster and in vaster quantities than ever before. Read more…
The People’s Choice Word of the Year 2016 goes to halal snack pack! Honorable mentions go to alt-right and fake news. Read more…
A collection of some media coverage of Word of the Year 2016.
My father was trained as a journalist in the days when newspapers cared about their reputations as disseminators of information that was accurate and reliable. It wasn’t just a legal anxiety, it was an organisational pride in the quality of their news reporting. He told me that you can’t half-know something. You either know it or you don’t. Read more…
Lewis Carroll contributed some of the most inspirational writing in history to the world. With his remarkable manipulation of language, he captured the imaginations not only of children, but of aspiring writers, readers and everyone else who came in contact with his word. Read more…
Here at the Macquarie Dictionary, we have maintained our card catalogue from the early 1980s. It’s in more or less pristine condition, and contained within are hundreds of thousands of original words and definitions from the very first edition of our dictionary. Read more…
The Committee’s Choice for the 2016 word of the Year goes to fake news. Honourable mentions go to enby and halal snack pack.
Do you agree or disagree with the Committee? Have your say and vote now!
Here at Macquarie Dictionary, we like to let the year end completely before we make a decision on which word to crown Word of the Year. We have a basic policy that all the candidates are drawn from words which have been selected and researched and written into the dictionary during the year… Read more…
A thesaurus is a treasure trove of new words for you to discover. More people write now than ever before, whether it be in messages, emails, articles, stories, or anything else. It’s important to keep the mind sharp and the vocabulary growing and one of the many ways to do this is to utilise a thesaurus…. Read more…
Many words have more than one definition, and these are listed in each entry numerically. But is there any order to this or is it organised chaos? In this case, thankfully, there are specific rules for how definitions are ordered. In a word such as joke or kangaroo or any word where there are multiple meanings, the following applies… Read more…
We are always on the lookout for new, emerging and interesting words to add to the Macquarie Dictionary. In a time of global instant communication, these words are popping up faster and in vaster quantities than ever before. Read more…
Counting down from popularity, here’s what you and the rest of Australia (and the world) wanted to know about in 2016. Read more…
