The virtual linguist

If you're still looking for Christmas presents

A dictionary makes a great Christmas present - I think so, anyway. Most households have at least one dictionary, and they do get out of date quite quickly these days. Collins published a new, 30th anniversary, edition of their dictionary in 2009, and there was an updated Concise Oxford Dictionary published this year too. They're both excellent dictionaries.

I like Chambers dictionary, too, as it has lots more words in it than the two mentioned above, particularly Northern English and Scottish dialect words. It's rather quirky and is renowned for its humorous definitions eg Mullet: a hairstyle that is short at the front, long at the back and ridiculous all round. It has words in it which I could never imagine anyone ever needing or wanting to use eg paneity (the state of being bread) and shunamitism (rejuvenation of an old man by a young woman). Shunamitism the word might never be used, but of course the phenomenon still exists - the names Ronnie Wood and Rod Stewart spring to mind! I blogged on the 2008 edition of Chambers here.

For anyone thinking of buying a dictionary as a present, here's a blog I wrote last December giving hints on how to choose the best one for your purposes.  

Unfriend named word of the year

The New Oxford American Dictionary has chosen 'unfriend' as its word of the year. Unfriend is a verb and means to remove someone from your list of 'friends' on Facebook and other social networking sites.

This is the first time in several years that the winning word has not been environment-related. 2008's word of the year was hypermiling, 2007's was locavore and in 2006 the number one place was taken by carbon neutral.

Here are some other finalists for the accolade:

intexticated: when people are distracted by texting when driving

sexting: sending sexually explicit messages and pictures over your mobile phone

deleb: a dead celebrity

netbook: a very small laptop computer with limited memory

More words and more on the story here.

How are Chinese dictionaries arranged?

I was giving a talk earlier this evening to a WI (Women's Institute) group on the history of dictionaries and I was completely stumped by a question from a woman in the audience. She asked me if there were Chinese dictionaries and how they were organised. I am ashamed to say I didn't know, so I have just looked it up.

The Wikipedia page on the subject is complicated. From what I can see there are two popular ways of arranging a Chinese dictionary - by pronunciation and by so-called radicals, which are recurring parts of Chinese characters. The entries in dictionaries that are arranged by pronunciation are listed alphabetically by Pinyin spelling (ie romanised Chinese). In dictionaries organised by radicals, there is a core of 214 standard radicals to which sections of the dictionary are devoted. If you need to look up a character you first identify the radical and find that section of the dictionary. Then you count the remaining strokes in the character and the entries will be arranged by number of strokes added to that particular radical. You can look inside this OUP dictionary and see the list of radicals (not the full 214, as this is a dictionary for learners) and other pages.

This, in a very oversimplified nutshell, is how Chinese dictionaries are arranged. There is more information on this Wikipedia page devoted to section headers in a Chinese dictionary. Section header is another term for radical. All of these pages are pretty difficult to understand if you don't know any Chinese, which is my problem.

Definition of husband

Husband is defined in the Oxford Dictionary of English as "a married man considered in relation to his wife". The OED's definition is "a man joined to a woman by marriage". Other dictionaries' definitions are similar. So newspapers have had difficulty this week in knowing how to refer to the ex-partner of comedian Matt Lucas, who has died. The couple had been through a civil ceremony, sometimes called a marriage ceremony, but they had then divorced. Some newspapers used the terms ex-partner, ex-lover or simply ex, whilst others called the dead man Lucas' ex-husband.

As society changes language changes, and in particular, the meanings of old words change. Since the terms marriage and divorce are usually defined in dictionaries with reference to men and women or husbands and wives, it usually sounds odd to hear the phrases "his husband" or "he divorced him". English lacks words for partners in modern relationships; it sounds odd to refer to a middle-aged man as a boyfriend, for instance, and lady-friend sounds rather twee. Partner is a word that is often used, but it is not a satisfactory term as it can also refer to business partners.

You probably have never looked up husband in a dictionary as you know what it means, but looking up familiar words in dictionaries can be very instructive and enlightening. The hus bit of the word goes back to the Old English word for a house (Old English was the language spoken before the Norman Conquest in 1066), and the band bit goes back ultimately to Old Norse and the word for a peasant owning his own land or a freeholder or yeoman. Husband as a verb means to till the ground, to look after trees and plants and to cultivate. A person who does these things is a husbandman, rather than husband, although the OED makes clear that husband once did mean one who tills and cultivates the soil.

From the OED I have learnt that husband's tea is weak tea, a ship's husband is a marine superintendant, a husband-town is a farm and husband weed is agricultural or rustic clothing.

Wireless in the OED

I listed some of the recent new entries in the OED in my post a couple of days ago. As well as the addition of completely new words and phrases, other recent amendments to the Dictionary concern existing entries. One of these is the word wireless. In the first edition of the OED in 1926 the entry for wireless extended over five paragraphs. Now there are over eighty paragraphs devoted to it.

At one point it looked as if wireless was a dying word. In the 1920s the word wireless was common for a radio receiving set, but eventually the word radio became more popular. The word wireless has been saved by the advent of mobile phones and laptops. New entries in the OED in 2009 under the main headword wireless include wireless technology, wireless device, wireless router and wireless service.

New entries in the OED September 2009

The OED issues a review every quarter listing the new and revised entries for that quarter. Recently editors have worked mostly on words beginning re- so there are a lot of new verb entries beginning re- eg redefend, redeliberate and refinish. Just because the word has only just entered the OED for the first time, this does not mean that the word itself is new. The first citation for refinish is 1773. A lot of entries containing 'red' have been added too, eg red wine vinegar. This is another old term, although it was not in the dictionary before; there is a citation from 1597.

Apart from words beginning R, other new entries include:

anyhoo: variant of 'anyhow'

c'est la vie: French for 'that's life' but with the definition "expressing resignation at, or acceptance of, things as they are"

clonable: that can be cloned

dot-org: internet address

First Nation: North American peoples of Canada

globaloney: nonsensical talk concerning global issues

soundclash: piece of music with contrasting elements

toasted cheese: self-explanatory

twitterpated: love-struck

unmixed blessing: wholly advantageous situation or thing

warm-down: cooling-down session after exercise

waterboarding: interrogation technique which simulates drowning

wire transfer: method of transferring funds

You can read the Chief Editor's report and the full list of the new and revised entries on the OED website. Remember that virtually all UK libraries subscribe to the online version of the OED and your library ticket will give you access (ask your librarian for a PIN number if necessary - it's a fantastic resource available free of charge to library members). 

Iconic

The 1960s model Twiggy turned 60 this week and I have seen her described in several articles as 'the iconic model' as well as read about her 'iconic pose'. A recent Daily Express article used the word 'iconic' three times in the space of a few centimetres: the title was "Twiggy marks 60th with iconic show", the first sentence was "Her face has become an iconic image of the Swinging Sixties" and the caption under the photograph was simply "Iconic".

Iconic is a ubiquitous word these days. The iPod is an iconic music player, or has iconic status. Barbie has been described as an iconic toy. The word these days seems to mean simply 'famous' or 'well-known' and is a far cry from the definition in popular dictionaries, which haven't caught up with the shift in meaning yet. Here are two:

Oxford Dictionary of English: 1) Relating to, or of the nature of, an icon: (example of use) language is not in general an iconic sign system. 2) (of a classical Greek statue) depicting a victorious athlete in a conventional style.

Collins: 1) Relating to, resembling, or having the character of an icon. 2) (of memorial sculptures, esp. those depicting athletes of ancient Greece) having a fixed conventional style.

An icon is an object of veneration, so it seems hardly appropriate to apply it to an iPod or a Barbie, let alone Twiggy. And none of those things has much to do with Greek athletes, nor are they conventional.

Chambers Dictionary doesn't even see fit to give a definition of 'iconic'; it just has it as an adjective derived from the word 'icon', but it wouldn't suprise me if the adjective was used more often than the noun 'icon' these days.

Boswell on BBC radio

To celebrate the 300th anniversary of Dr Samuel Johnson's birth (his actual birthday is next weekend), BBC Radio 4 has a series of programmes (see here). Today on the radio there was the first part of the serialisation of Boswell's biography of Johnson - which tells you as much about Boswell as about Johnson. You can listen via your computer (here) for the next seven days if you missed it. 

New edition of Collins dictionary goes on sale

The latest edition of Collins Dictionary, containing 267 new words, went on sale a few days ago. The new words include mankini, popularised by Sacha Baron Cohen (pictures here), frugalista (a person who tries to stay fashionably dressed on a budget), carborexic (person obsessed with reducing their carbon footprint), meh (expression of boredom), quantitative easing (see this old post of mine), hey-ho (sound of weary disappointment) and the abbreviated forms defo (definitely) and soz (sorry).

Read more here (BBC) and here (Times).

Word definitions according to insurance companies

I bought some holiday insurance earlier on this evening, and noticed that three pages of the policy terms and conditions are taken up with definitions of words. Clearly there must have been problems with claims in the past, so the company is trying to avoid arguments with policy-holders in future. They are certainly right to include the definitions, because some definitions are not what you might expect. I compared them with the definitions in the one-volume Oxford Dictionary of English (ODE).

A relative is, according to the ODE, a person connected by blood or marriage. There is not an entry for close relative in the dictionary, but a close relative can be a huge number of people, according to the insurance company - parent of one's fiance or partner, foster child and legal guardian, eg.

A domestic pet, according to the insurance document, is only a cat or dog (and it must be owned by the insured person). The ODE's definition of pet is 'a domestic or tamed animal or bird...' and the sentence used to illustrate the word is 'the pony was a family pet'.

Any kind of professional sporting activity is hazardous in the eyes of the insurance company, as is any kind of work except for clerical work, bar work and waiting/waitressing. Hazardous, therefore, seems to be more than just plain dangerous.

Home country isn't a separate entry in the ODE, but for insurance purposes your home country is the country where you are registered for income tax.

Mugging, according to the insurance company, is a violent attack with a view to theft, and is made by person(s) not previously known to you. The dictionary agrees regarding violent attack and theft, but makes no mention of whether the mugger should be a stranger or not. Moreover, the dictionary specifies that mugging takes place in a public place.

If you leave your suitcase in a manned left-luggage office, would you regard your bag as 'unattended'? Possibly not, but it would be unattended according to the insurance company's definition. Unattended means that 'you' do not have full view of your property.

I hope I won't need to make a claim because of terrorism, because the company's definition of that is extremely complex. The ODE's is fairly clear: "the use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims". It is obviously too vague for the insurers. Here is their definition of terrorism: "an act, including but not limited to the use of force or violence and/or the threat thereof, of any person or group(s) of persons, whether acting alone or on behalf of or in connection with any organisation(s) or governments, committed for political, religious, ideological or similar purposes including the intention to influence any government and/or put the public, or any section of the public, in fear".