Buttercups or blogs?
Oxford University Press, in revising the headword list of their Junior Dictionary, gave rise to a discussion in the British press… Read more…
Blogs
Should these words go in the Macquarie Dictionary?
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…
Words that disappear
Spare a thought for the words that disappear from use because the thing they represent becomes outmoded. Read more…
Quite the change
Recently we discovered that some of us used the little word quite in quite different ways. Some of us were quite devastated by this. Read more…
Jail vs Gaol
The spelling gaol was the accepted spelling in Australian English until the 1990s… Read more…
Fit as a fiddle
The phrase fit as a fiddle dates back to the 1600s in British English, but had a slightly different meaning then. Read more…
Far-fetched or far-flung?
A bit of research revealed to me that far-flung instead of far-fetched was gaining in frequency. Read more…
Portmanteau words
Crunching words together to make a new coinage has been a popular pastime in the English language since the nineteenth century… Read more…
Easter
There is so much symbolism surrounding the festival of Easter that it is hard to unpick. Read more…
Antique words
Just as we love our antique bric-a-brac, so too do we love our antique words. We pick up an object, speculate on its purpose in life, admire its shape and colour even if we have no idea where it came from and what it is supposed to do. Read more…
Books that inspire: Susan Butler
So, Australia’s word guru, the woman who has been at the helm (if a dictionary can be said to have a helm) of the Macquarie
The Great Australian Spelling Book
Introducing The Great Australian Spelling Book, the official companion to The Great Australian Spelling Bee, the hit TV series from Network TEN. Written by the Macquarie Dictionary editors, The
To ‘dispatch’ or to ‘despatch’?
To dispatch or to despatch – that was the question from a dictionary user who had been taught at school that despatch was correct and dispatch was incorrect. Read more…