New words in the OED December 2011

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, over a thousand new entries went into the OED in December 2011. The overwhelming majority (but not all) begin with A. They can be viewed, even by people without a subscription to the OED I think, here. As usual, they represent a broad spectrum of register, meaning, and geographical variety of English. They include words fairly new to English, such as chemtrail and va-jay-jay (slang for 'vagina'), plus words that seem new but are older than you might think, such as academy school and 'stitch and bitch'. There are also words of historical interest, such as Adam Tiler (from the 17th century), which is, or was, a pickpocket's accomplice. There are some very old words indeed, such as abecedarium, another word for an alphabet, first used in Old English. There are African words, such as abakwetha (Xhosa traditional ritual) and abacost (man's suit in former Zaire) There are also new meanings of old words; Adam has a third sense now, as another name for the drug ecstasy. There are also old words that have become new parts of speech; accompanied and accomplishing have both been added as adjectives and accordion has gone in as a verb.

 

A lot of sub-entries have gone in too (these are phrases that appear in existing entries), including abdication crisis, abstinence programme, abuse victim, acceptance speech, accident black spot, accident scene, account manager, ace of hearts, ace of spades, administration fee, adrenaline junkie, advertising campaign and very many others.

 

See all new words here. If you have a UK library card you can almost certainly get online access to the main part of the OED via your library's website - look for the Online Reference Shelf or some such wording. Virtually every UK local library authority subscribes on its readers' behalf.

Comments

[John]

Thanks for two highly-interesting posts. You obviously put a lot of work into them. I'm sure all of your readers have enjoyed them.

FYI, the links lead to the list of words (don't know it it is complete), but not definitions, etc.

[Virtual Linguist]

Thanks, John. Yes, you need to subscribe to the OED to see the definitions. It's expensive - several hundred pounds a year (mind you, it is a fantastic resource), but as I said in the post, most people in the UK can access it with their library card number. For those elsewhere, it's worth seeing if your local library subscribes, or if you have access to a university library, that might subscribe on its members' behalf.

There is a public section of the OED website (oed.com) and there is lots of very interesting information about the history of the dictionary and other stuff available for everyone to view.