The English language has the capacity to create new forms, often by fusing two existing words to create one word with a new meaning, such as gasbag or chinwag. This is by far the most common way of expanding our lexicon. 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…
Recently I gave a talk at Nunawading Library in Melbourne. The discussion afterwards was on various current usage problems, including the use of the word literally as a marker of emphasis with no real meaning but a functionality that seems to be much enjoyed by many people in spoken and written language… Read more…
How well do you know your phobias? Take the Halloween edition phobia quiz to find out!
My attention has been drawn to the creation of the new verb, to wibble-wobble, meaning ‘to prevaricate’. This is a contribution of Mathias Cormann who made reference to the nursery rhyme, Jelly on a Plate which has the verse… 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…
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…
Here at the Macquarie Dictionary, we put our heads together and came up with a few overlooked sports that we think would be perfect in the next games. Read more…
This NAIDOC Week, we celebrated Indigenous culture by highlighting some of the many words that have become a part of Australian English from various Indigenous languages. 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…
Not so long ago, the world was swept up in the all-consuming new gaming phenomenon of Pokémon Go. Unless you live in a very remote, secluded area, you will have seen the evidence of Pokémania… Read more…
A few years ago an executive from the McCann advertising agency approached me with an idea to document the process of the coining of a new word. He had a social phenomenon in mind for which he wished to find a word… Read more…
A friend of mine in Singapore reported that the Singaporean government has taken up the term pioneer to refer to anyone old enough to have contributed to Singapore’s early nationhood from 1955 onwards. Pioneers… Read more…
The grolar bear was added to the dictionary in 2015, and before you ask, no, we didn’t make it up. Read more…
Doomsday, Judgement Day, or the Apocalypse, whatever you want to call it, the strategy of being prepared for an unknown disaster is now becoming 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 Australian Writers’ Centre recently held a competition asking for the best invented portmanteau. They awarded their winners, but we’ve trawled through the entries and found some favourites of our own. Read more…
Oxford University Press, in revising the headword list of their Junior Dictionary, gave rise to a discussion in the British press… Read more…
