Language Lovers

Russiamania, Chocolate Orange & Henry VIII powers: July’s Words in the News

If not for a certain profanity-laced rant by new White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci, we’d probably all still be talking about Russia and its alleged role in the most recent US General Election. Indeed, at the start of July, it seemed to be the only thing newspapers could talk… Read More

The Despacito-inspired guide to Spanish: 8 phrases to spark your summer romance

Bieber’s Spanglish smash hit Despacito (translation: slowly) with Puerto Rican singer Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee is dominating the charts this summer, as it reaches 4.6 billion global streams across leading platforms and becomes the first mostly Spanish song to hit number one spot since Los Del Rio’s ‘Macarena’ in… Read More

‘Jobsborne’, ‘ultracrepidarianism’ & ‘unicorn latte’: Lucy Mangan mulls over your latest word submissions

With DeathKnell’s submission of “flatulate” – to break wind – comes a sudden appreciation of the fact that all our words for farting are supremely well-suited as descriptors of the act. “Flatulate” (and “flatulence”) and “fart” themselves are almost onomatopoeic – one for the more drawn-out kind,… Read More

‘Wights’, ‘maesters’ & more: The etymology of Game Of Thrones

Winter is finally here. As our favourite characters are pitted head-to-head in the latest season, we decided to explore the etymology behind Game Of Thrones’ most popular words and phrases. Hand of the King ‘What the king dreams, the Hand builds’ – Eddard Stark We’ve had a few Hands of… Read More

Love Island lingo: Collins’ guide to the top 10 words & phrases

With over a million viewers tuning in six nights a week and more than 183 million tweets about the show, Love Island lingo is working its way into the nation’s lexicon. This year’s show has welcomed a wide range of islanders from Essex, Manchester and as far north as… Read More

#MeteorWatchDay – We delve into etymology behind this astronomical event

June 30 this year has been designated Meteor Watch Day, and people are encouraged to look out for spectacular bursts of light in the sky caused by small pieces of rock or metal burning up when they enter the earth’s atmosphere from space. These objects get their name from… Read More

Do you ‘Jiffle’? – Lucy Mangan ponders your most recent word submissions

It has, I think we can all agree, been a tough few weeks – months – year or two – for all of us. And the contributions to the Collins’ wordstock often reflect that. This week we have griefsploitation from LLKKMM, which is the practice of trying to leverage… Read More

We take a look at the etymology behind words like ‘pwn’, ‘covfefe’ and ‘newt’ that came about by mistake

President Donald Trump recently caused his Twitter followers to scratch their heads when he wrote about ‘negative press covfefe’. The president had probably just made a mistake in typing the word ‘coverage’, but the apparently random assortment of letters got people wondering exactly what a covfefe might be, and… Read More

From ‘mugwump’, ‘Mayism’ and ‘gerrymandering’ – 15 election words you should know about

Do you know your filibuster from your flugie? As the 2017 General Election campaign comes to a close, we take a look at some of our favourite political words and phrases from this year’s campaign and from those that came before. Mayismnoun the policies… Read More