Oxford English Dictionary

It shouldn’t have been big news when the Oxford English Dictionary announced, a couple of weeks ago, that it was adding entries for LOL , OMG , and BFF to its online edition. The initialisms — short for “laughing out loud,” “oh my God,” and “best friends forever” — were just a few of the hundreds of additions and revisions noted in the regular quarterly update. And nobody groused about the inclusion of OK , FYI , URL , or even TMI , which was added two years ago. But this time, for some reason, the new words set off a stormlet of annoyance among columnists and...

Back in the '90s, I blew off work one afternoon to go sit alone in a Quincy movie theater and watch the Pamela Anderson classic "Barb Wire. " ("Post-Apocalyptic remake of "Casablanca" set in a strip club" - IMDB.com.) Anderson plays a violent, quasi-libber bounty hunter who hates it when men call her a certain name. "Don't call me Babe!" is the movie's oft-repeated tagline, uttered by Anderson-Wire just before she whomps the bejesus out of some male chauvinist thug. My version: Don't call me Dude.

A great project on how Americans speak--make that the great project on how Americans speak--is reaching completion this spring. It only took 50 years. When Fred Cassidy, an English professor at the University of Wisconsin Madison, was named chief editor of a dictionary project to track American dialects in 1962, he had a faster timetable in mind. The Dictionary of American Regional English began in earnest a few years later, when 80 fieldworkers armed with elaborate questionnaires spread out to more than a thousand communities around the country.

A great project on how Americans speak--make that the great project on how Americans speak--is reaching completion this spring. It only took 50 years. When Fred Cassidy, an English professor at the University of Wisconsin Madison, was named chief editor of a dictionary project to track American dialects in 1962, he had a faster timetable in mind. The Dictionary of American Regional English began in earnest a few years later, when 80 fieldworkers armed with elaborate questionnaires spread out to more than a thousand communities around the country.

LONDON — OMG! LOL! The venerable Oxford English Dictionary approves of the three-letter, Internet-inspired expressions you use for “Oh, my God!’’ and “Laughing out loud.’’ It is adding them to the authoritative reference book’s latest online update. Both expressions are among 900 new words included this week. Cracking the dictionary, however, is no easy task. “The OED is quite cautious,’’ said Graeme Diamond, the dictionary’s principal editor for new words.

Back in the '90s, I blew off work one afternoon to go sit alone in a Quincy movie theater and watch the Pamela Anderson classic "Barb Wire. " ("Post-Apocalyptic remake of "Casablanca" set in a strip club" - IMDB.com.) Anderson plays a violent, quasi-libber bounty hunter who hates it when men call her a certain name. "Don't call me Babe!" is the movie's oft-repeated tagline, uttered by Anderson-Wire just before she whomps the bejesus out of some male chauvinist thug. My version: Don't call me Dude.

When Ammon Shea spent a year slogging through the Oxford English Dictionary — a task he documented in his 2008 book, “Reading the OED” — he chose to take on the 20-volume print edition, all 21,730 pages of it. That seemed a bit masochistic, given the convenience of the OED Online, but maybe it was smart: The online version, with its colorful links and cross-references, could easily tempt a scholar into pleasant detours and blown deadlines....

What could be more traditional than the words we use for pairing off? Not everyone, of course, goes as far as William and Kate, the new-wedded duke and duchess of Cambridge, with their “wilt thou” and “who giveth,” but everyone’s wedding vocabulary includes helpmate and bridegroom and witticisms on wedlock. A plain-looking word, however, may have a convoluted past. Over centuries of use, some familiar wedding words have disguised their earlier selves, often morphing into shapes that look more logical to their users.

Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages By Ammon Shea Perigee, 223 pp., $21.95Some men set out to climb Mount Everest. Ammon Shea set out to read the Oxford English Dictionary full time, from cover to cover. Or rather covers to covers, his recent job as a furniture mover providing handy preparation for hoisting its 20 hefty volumes. And why did Shea fix his sights on this Brobdingnagian challenge - because it was there? "I have read the OED," he says, "so that you don't have to. " The pitfall to avoid in writing a book about a dictionary (or a review of a book about a dictionary)

"Is gotten even a word?" demands reader Bruce Karger of Pittsburgh, challenging my recent use of the phrase gotten smarter. "My many teachers and my mother from Massachusetts would have said 'there is no such word.'" Naggers was the key word in a "South Park" episode earlier this month, but a Wikipedia entry about the show commented that naggers was "not a real word according to the dictionary," because it "does not have a plural form. " "Teachers are learning that they should be bonused for the scores of their students," said Keith Ablow on the "Today" show last week.

Whether you celebrate the holiday or not, you've probably heard your share and more of cheerful "Merry Christmas" greetings over the past few weeks, and yet never once thought about the etymology of Christmas. There's not much reason to, really--it's about as transparent as English etymology gets: Christ (as in Jesus), plus -mas, from "mass, festival. " That suffix, -mas, may be relatively unusual in English these days--the Oxford English Dictionary calls it "no longer productive," meaning that new words are now rarely formed with it. But those three little letters are one of the last vestiges of a whole...

Woot! The online expression of enthusiasm is now in the dictionary. So are textspeak, sexting — and, less happily, cyberbullying. They are among 400 new entries in the 12th edition of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary, published this month. Also making the cut is retweet — to repost another Twitter user's message. Editor Angus Stevenson revealed the new entries in a blog post Thursday. Unlike the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary, the concise edition was founded to include modern and slang terms as they enter common use. Its first edition in 1911...

It was August 1997, just 14 years ago, when the Globe launched The Word; hardly ancient times, yet some of the early columns read like bulletins from another era. John F. Kennedy Jr. scandalized the nation by publicly criticizing his cousins in print, and scandalized The Word by mangling a Bible quotation in the process. A sexual harassment lawsuit revived discussion of a "Seinfeld" episode, first aired in 1993, that hinged on rhyming "clitoris" with "Dolores" (a distinctly minority pronunciation then, though maybe not now)

What could be more traditional than the words we use for pairing off? Not everyone, of course, goes as far as William and Kate, the new-wedded duke and duchess of Cambridge, with their “wilt thou” and “who giveth,” but everyone’s wedding vocabulary includes helpmate and bridegroom and witticisms on wedlock. A plain-looking word, however, may have a convoluted past. Over centuries of use, some familiar wedding words have disguised their earlier selves, often morphing into shapes that look more logical to their users.

It shouldn’t have been big news when the Oxford English Dictionary announced, a couple of weeks ago, that it was adding entries for LOL , OMG , and BFF to its online edition. The initialisms — short for “laughing out loud,” “oh my God,” and “best friends forever” — were just a few of the hundreds of additions and revisions noted in the regular quarterly update. And nobody groused about the inclusion of OK , FYI , URL , or even TMI , which was added two years ago. But this time, for some reason, the new words set off a stormlet of annoyance among...

LONDON — OMG! LOL! The venerable Oxford English Dictionary approves of the three-letter, Internet-inspired expressions you use for “Oh, my God!’’ and “Laughing out loud.’’ It is adding them to the authoritative reference book’s latest online update. Both expressions are among 900 new words included this week. Cracking the dictionary, however, is no easy task. “The OED is quite cautious,’’ said Graeme Diamond, the dictionary’s principal editor for new words.

It was August 1997, just 14 years ago, when the Globe launched The Word; hardly ancient times, yet some of the early columns read like bulletins from another era. John F. Kennedy Jr. scandalized the nation by publicly criticizing his cousins in print, and scandalized The Word by mangling a Bible quotation in the process. A sexual harassment lawsuit revived discussion of a "Seinfeld" episode, first aired in 1993, that hinged on rhyming "clitoris" with "Dolores" (a distinctly minority pronunciation then, though maybe not now)

Whether you celebrate the holiday or not, you've probably heard your share and more of cheerful "Merry Christmas" greetings over the past few weeks, and yet never once thought about the etymology of Christmas. There's not much reason to, really--it's about as transparent as English etymology gets: Christ (as in Jesus), plus -mas, from "mass, festival. " That suffix, -mas, may be relatively unusual in English these days--the Oxford English Dictionary calls it "no longer productive," meaning that new words are now rarely formed with it. But those three little letters are one of the last vestiges of...

When Ammon Shea spent a year slogging through the Oxford English Dictionary — a task he documented in his 2008 book, “Reading the OED” — he chose to take on the 20-volume print edition, all 21,730 pages of it. That seemed a bit masochistic, given the convenience of the OED Online, but maybe it was smart: The online version, with its colorful links and cross-references, could easily tempt a scholar into pleasant detours and blown deadlines....

Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages By Ammon Shea Perigee, 223 pp., $21.95Some men set out to climb Mount Everest. Ammon Shea set out to read the Oxford English Dictionary full time, from cover to cover. Or rather covers to covers, his recent job as a furniture mover providing handy preparation for hoisting its 20 hefty volumes. And why did Shea fix his sights on this Brobdingnagian challenge - because it was there? "I have read the OED," he says, "so that you don't have to. " The pitfall to avoid in writing a book about a dictionary (or a review of a book about a dictionary)