It’s time for the Australian National Dictionary Center to release their ‘Word Of The Year’ for 2018.
This usually involves trawling the backwaters of social media to locate a phrase no one’s ever heard of.
No doubt you hear last year’s winner ‘Kwaussie’ – ‘kiwi(New Zealander)-aussie’ in general usage on a daily basis.
2018’s winner is ‘Canberra Bubble.’
This is the phenomenon whereby federal politicians, bureaucrats, and political journalists believe what’s going on in Canberra is actually of substantial interest to the rest of Australia.
Other short listed phrases were ‘bag rage’, the impact of finding out supermarkets no longer provide free shopping bags, and ‘drought relief’, the collection and provision of support for those struggling with lack of rain in primary production (and wondering where all the money that was collected has ended up).
All in all it seems to be have been a slow year for Australian language, which is a bit disappointing given that the Honey Badger spent all those weeks being the Bachelor.
And why hasn’t ‘Netflix and chill’ ever got a run?
Tag Archives: Language
He Had Vision, The Rest Of The World Wore Bifocals – Farewell William Goldman
William Goldman, author both the book and movie versions of The Princess Bride has died.
You may also remember him from such other movie screenplays as Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid and All The President’s Men, among others.
I want to say his death is ‘inconcievable,’ but perhaps that word doesn’t mean what I want it to mean in this context.
When a great storyteller is gone there stories remain to be told again and passed on to others.
And, thanks to William Goldman, every time I conduct or attend a wedding, regardless of what I’m actually saying or doing, these are the words that are actually echoing in my mind.
How To Pluralize And/Or Add Possessive Case To Last Names (via Mental Floss)
This Mental Floss article links to an article on Slate about how to pluralise surnames, and then refers to some other posts that deal with how to add apostrophes in order to indicate possessive case for surnames.
Plural and possessive, they’ve got that covered too.
Just in time for the end of year and Christmas seasons.
300 New Scrabble Words
There are reports that Merriam-Webster who produce the official dictionary for Scrabble have released an updated edition with 300 words added.
Some of those words are featured here at this post on the Merriam-Webster website.
Probably the biggest news is that ‘OK’ is now on the approved list.
If you’re not happy about that you could say ‘ew’ or make a ‘frowny’ face, because they’re both there as well.
Scrabble purists will celebrate new words, the rest of us will lament the disintegration of English language.
Cue: zomboid, twerk, sheeple, wayback, botnet, emoji, facepalm, puggle and nubber.
Twenty-Five Words Being Added To Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary In 2018
For a change this list of words being added to Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary in 2018 not only contains words I know, but even a few that I’m surprised aren’t already there.
Some abbreviations: guac, fave.
Some tech words: force quit, predictive.
Some geek words: adorbs, TL;DR.
And more.
Read the list at Mental Floss.
What If English Pronunciation Was Phonetically Consistent
This effort at standardising English pronunciation is surprisingly understandable.
It also provides an interesting progression in accent as the process develops.
Fifty Collective Nouns For Groups Of Animals (via Mental Floss)
It’s always fun to keep up with collective nouns for groups of different animals.
This article from Mental Floss has some I’d not heard of.
A walk of snails (or an escargatoire)
A coterie of prairie dogs.
A bale of turtles.
A wisdom of wombats.
Among others.
Some sound made up, but the ones I did know were legitimate, so I guess they’re all good.
Check out how many you knew.
