Category Archives: Uncategorized

Unlost: Anne Carson Relational Bibliography

Announcing here that Unlost: Anne Carson Relational Bibliography is now up and running at unlost.uwaterloo.ca. This is a bibliographical resource listing works by, on, and in Anne Carson. Version 1.0, released this month, lists 3,504 records, categorized by type, crossed-referenced, and tagged with over 1,000 subject headings. The site is intended to grow over time, and […]

30.07.2024 – 12:35 | By D-AW | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

Ages of Word Types

Some years ago Marc Alexander published some fascinating treemaps based on the HTOED (see here: https://historicalthesaurus.arts.gla.ac.uk/treemaps/) showing how various conceptual domains grew and shrunk their vocabulary over time. Recently someone asked me what OED could tell us about the ages of some specific  trait words in English. The linked spreadsheet gives an answer to that, […]

13.07.2024 – 12:44 | By D-AW | Posted in Digital Humanities, Language and Literature in Society, Lexicography, Uncategorized | Comments (0)

Published: Antedating (in) the OED

Out recently in Notes & Queries is a short article by me on antedating rates in the OED since revision started in 2000:Antedating (in) the Oxford English Dictionary The article is OA, and linked in .pdf above. It’s short, and the point is pretty straightforward. I’ll pull out the graphs here for your viewing pleasure. See […]

30.11.2023 – 17:38 | By D-AW | Posted in Digital Humanities, Lexicography, Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Comments (4)

The New-Look OED: The End of the Entry

The new-look OED Online tosses a lot that was great, and unique, and real, about OED, while offering little new of value.

30.07.2023 – 10:09 | By D-AW | Posted in Digital Humanities, Language and Literature in Society, Lexicography, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Comments (17)

Christmas Dinner

O, how I have complained over “DINNER” in the Oxford English Dictionary [see “Oxford English Dinner“]. The close of 2021 brought an early Christmas surprise: a new, fully revised entry. And it’s not just any revision, but one of those with an extended lexicological and sociohistorical note. The first main definition now says: 1. Originally: […]

28.12.2021 – 13:39 | By D-AW | Posted in Language and Literature in Society, Lexicography, Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Comments (1)

Nae Mair for the Nonce?

Growlsome, guzzledom, panfrivolium – Oxford English Dictionary #OED doing away with “nonce-words” | Nae Mair for the Nonce? | The Life of Words

11.12.2021 – 15:19 | By D-AW | Posted in Lexicography, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (2)

Seamus Heaney on Dictionaries

In the summer of 2012 Seamus Heaney wrote to me on some questions I had sent him about dictionaries and words and etymologies. Bits of what he had to say made it into a couple of talks I did around that time, but I recently rediscovered the original text, and thought it should see the […]

18.08.2020 – 19:58 | By D-AW | Posted in Etymology, Language and Literature in Society, Lexicography, Poetry, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Comments (3)

Fulsome Recovery

The 1989 Second Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary will tell you that you’re wrong if your think fulsome means the same as full. If you give a ‘fulsome answer’ to some question (as I’ve noticed many people do), it will tell you that your answer is ‘disgusting, repulsive, odious’, ‘Offensive to good taste’ and ‘gross […]

16.06.2020 – 14:15 | By D-AW | Posted in Digital Humanities, Etymology, Lexicography, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

“Covid-19”, and other swiftly documented words in the OED

The OED documented the verb to Google in a 2006 update, eight years after the first occurrence of this sense in print (1998, in eGroups, an old mailing list). Happy slap and derivatives also took eight years to get in, appearing in 2013.  Ditto paywall (published 2012), sext (2015), retweet (2015), and Schmallenberg virus (2019). Omnishambolic (2019) and live-blog (2013) took […]

07.06.2020 – 09:09 | By D-AW | Posted in Digital Humanities, Etymology, Lexicography, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Comments (3)

LOWBot Goes a(n)-Antedating

In an earlier post, OED Antedating OED, I documented how OED3’s rate of antedating had improved dramatically since the revision kicked off in 2000, from around 35-40% of word entries antedated in the first five or six years of updates, to above 60% since 2012, noting that one reason for the improvement must be the […]

16.05.2020 – 16:04 | By D-AW | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (3)