by Colin McIntosh​

The British dictionary tradition has differed from the American tradition in various ways, one of which is the treatment of words with a capital letter, like Brazil, Edinburgh, and John F. Kennedy.

British dictionaries traditionally made a distinction between content that was lexical and content that was encyclopedic. Lexical content (words, in other words) was the job of the dictionary, whereas encyclopedic content (countries, cities, dead white men) was the job of the encyclopedia. Nowadays, with the advent of search engines like Google, where all types of information are accessible, people tend not to distinguish between the two, and the internet is simply seen as one huge, amorphous source of information. This obviously has meant a big change in dictionary users’ expectations.

One enormous difference for dictionary makers in the digital age is that we can see what our users are looking up (or searching for, in the new parlance). When Samuel Johnson or James Murray published new dictionaries in past centuries, they had no idea if their users were looking up words they’d added, or if they were looking up words that hadn’t been included. Now we can run regular checks of “words searched for” and “words not found”. Continue reading “Look it up!” →

by Colin McIntosh​

It’s a feature of younger generations through the centuries that they feel the need to give themselves an identity through their ideas, their fashion, their politics, and their language. Leaving aside their language for another post, let’s look at the labels they’ve given themselves, that they’ve given others, and that others have given them, many of which are new additions to the Cambridge English Dictionary.

The Beat Generation, born in the US in the 30s, were probably the trailblazers. Young people who thought that personal experience was more important than accepted norms, they created the pattern for future generations of disaffected youth. Like their British equivalents, the Angry Young Men, the Beats tended to have a literary focus, although the term could also be used with a wider reference.

The boomers, or baby-boomers, born in the baby boom after the Second World War, were the ones who, in Harold MacMillan’s famous phrase “never had it so good”, and they’re still thought of in this way by succeeding generations who had it worse. They’re now being blamed for high property prices, the debt crisis, and impossible university tuition fees. Continue reading “The generation gap” →

by Colin McIntosh​

Scotland has been called various things over the centuries, not all of them complimentary. Called Caledonia by the Romans, Scotia by the medieval Latinists, and Alba by the Picts and Gaels, Scotland continues to refer to itself by all of these names, depending on whether the situation calls for stirring patriotism, sentimental poetry, or down-to-earth realism. Perhaps the low point was reached after the union with England in 1707, when Scottish supporters of the union called their home country “North Britain” in an attempt to downplay Scotland’s cultural uniqueness. What would William Wallace (of Braveheart fame) have made of it?

Scotland is effectively a trilingual country, speaking Gaelic, the dominant language in the Middle Ages, Scots, the dominant language in the Early Modern period, and a distinctive Scottish variety of English, Scottish English, increasingly dominant since the union with England. Each of these three is still spoken today and each has had an impact on the speech of all the people of Scotland, as well as the English spoken by the world at large. Continue reading “Scots wha hae!” →

by Colin McIntosh​

The credit crunch started to bite in 2008, with a whole lexicon of terms, some new and some previously confined to the vocabulary of economists and bankers, making an appearance in the news. Most of them are still with us, and some brand new ones have joined them in the Cambridge English Dictionary.

Toxic debt (debts that have little chance of being paid back or of being paid back with interest) was one of the main factors that caused the crash, with subprime loans (used to describe the practice of lending money, especially to buy a house, to people who may not be able to pay it back) made by the US institutions Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Many home owners were faced with foreclosure (having a property bought with borrowed money taken back because the money was not being paid back). Continue reading “The high price of a haircut” →

by Colin McIntosh​

Are you a fan of shows like Doctor Who and Star Trek? Both shows have been around since the 1960s, and, not surprisingly, have generated some of their own vocabulary, some of which has now entered the Cambridge English Dictionary.

The phenomenon of fandom, meaning “the state of being a fan of someone or something, especially a very enthusiastic one”, is a fairly recent one, but the things that these new fans are fans of are often far from new. The fans of the 50-year-old Doctor Who and Star Trek even have names for themselves, Whovians and Trekkies. These fanboys and fangirls (an informal and slightly derogatory way to refer to these over-enthusiastic fans) attend conventions and get involved in cosplay (dressing up as characters from the shows). Russell T. Davies, a writer and TV producer, was one such fanboy who later went on to become the first producer of the relaunched Doctor Who in the 21st century. Continue reading “Calling occupants of interplanetary craft” →