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Gender-fluid, YOLO and moobs among new entries to Oxford English Dictionary

More than 1,000 new words and phrases have made it into the latest edition of the Oxford English ...
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Newstalk

12.39 12 Sep 2016


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Gender-fluid, YOLO and moobs a...

Gender-fluid, YOLO and moobs among new entries to Oxford English Dictionary

Newstalk
Newstalk

12.39 12 Sep 2016


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More than 1,000 new words and phrases have made it into the latest edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, including biatch and 'Murica.

A new version of the OED, which describes itself as the definitive record of the English language, also includes the word gender-fluid.

The term, first recorded in 1987, is used to describe people who do not always identity as either male or female.

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Dictionary editors consider a term for inclusion when there is evidence of it being used in a variety of different sources, not just by one writer.

The OED says it selects "the most significant or important" words and those thought to be "likely to stand the test of time".

Other new entries in this quarterly update are fuhgeddaboutit, a colloquial American expression meaning 'forget about it', and Westminster bubble, a buzzword referring to the insular community working in and around the British parliament.

Moobs, the word for 'unusually prominent breasts on a man', and YOLO, the first version of which was used in a 19th-century English translation of Balzac’s French 'on ne vit qu’un fois' in his Le Cousin Pons, are entered too.

To mark the centenary of author Roald Dahl’s birth, the new OED also features a range of newly drafted entries connected to his writing.

These include the word gremlin - used in Dahl’s first children’s book - which the dictionary traces back to 1929 and its use as RAF slang to mean 'a lowly or despised person'.

The adjective Dahlesque makes its first appearance in the OED with a first quotation from 1983 in which a collection of stories is praised for its 'Dahlesque delight in the bizarre'.

A new sub-entry for golden ticket reveals that the first such prize was granted to the painter and engraver William Hogarth, long before Charlie Bucket found his own in the wrapper of a Wonka bar.

Hogarth’s ticket granted the bearer and five companions perpetual free admission to the pleasure gardens of Vauxhall, in return for paintings by the artist.


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