dictionary
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This Week in Indie Bookstores
A state run bookstore in Shanghai is ripping out pages from Webster’s Dictionary that include a reference to Taiwan. The Dallas Morning News checks in with Deep Vellum Books, the bookstore offshoot of Deep Vellum Publishing that owner Will Evans…
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It’s Scrumdiddlyumptious
The Oxford English Dictionary is doing its part to celebrate Roald Dahl’s 100th birthday by including some of his most memorable made-up words in the new edition, according to the Guardian: Michael Proffitt, chief editor of the OED, said: “The inclusion…
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A Living, Tweeting Dictionary
Following a viral Twitter interaction about whether the dictionary is adapting too much to new trends in language, Merriam-Webster reassures everyone that language changes over time, and that’s okay.
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You Keep Using That Word
I do not think it means what you think it means: Do words mean what the dictionary says they mean, or do they gain meaning through the way we use them? Any person without an agenda knows the answer is…
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Examining the Dictionary for Sexism
We need to know that the dictionary, as an institution, has a cultural power beyond the sum of its parts…And that does carry with it a responsibility to realize that we exist within that tension, and to not always hide…
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Oxford Dictionary to Review Sexist Sentences
A Twitter storm over sexism within the Oxford Dictionary has lead its publisher, Oxford University Press, to reconsider how it selects example sentences, reports the Guardian. The dictionary includes sentences to explain usage of words, but researchers found that the book…
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The Making of the OED
The Oxford English Dictionary, the first comprehensive catalog of the English language, took seventy years to compile. Volunteers aided the project, and one of the biggest contributors happened to be a murderer who lived in an insane asylum: Through the…
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Use It in a Sentence
British designer Jez Burrows was looking up a word in the New Oxford American Dictionary and was struck by how literary the example sentences for word definitions were. So he created a new Tumblr called Dictionary Stories, where he posts…
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Brave New Words
This year in the decline of the English language, Dictionary.com has added words like “slacktivism,” “lifehack,” and “basic,” according to the Dictionary.com blog. On the positive side, they finally added definitions for gender-inclusive words like “agender,” “bigender,” and “gender-fluid,” and…