Posted on 24 June 2016

Buttercups or blogs?

There is a place for both...

Oxford University Press, in revising the headword list of their Junior Dictionary, gave rise to a discussion in the British press... Read more...
Posted on 17 June 2016

Words that disappear

Spare a thought for the words that disappear from use because the thing they represent becomes outmoded. Read more...
Posted on 31 May 2016

Should these words go in the Macquarie Dictionary?

May 2016

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...
Posted on 26 May 2016

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...  
Posted on 2 May 2016

Jail vs Gaol

The spelling gaol was the accepted spelling in Australian English until the 1990s... Read more...
Posted on 14 April 2016

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...
Posted on 5 April 2016

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...
Posted on 31 March 2016

Far-fetched or far-flung?

Are we coming or going?

A bit of research revealed to me that far-flung instead of far-fetched was gaining in frequency. Read more...
Posted on 22 March 2016

Easter

There is so much symbolism surrounding the festival of Easter that it is hard to unpick. Read more...
Posted on 8 March 2016

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...
Posted on 1 August 2015

OzPic: Picturing the Australian Environment

This joint project between the ABC and Macquarie Dictionary aims to uncover new words relating to the Australian environment and to collect photographs that illustrate the environment around you for inclusion in the dictionary.
Posted on 17 April 2012

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...