Language Lovers

Twictionary & how the Collins Dictionary evolves every day

21st May 2014

This week, Collins launched the search for a new word to be added to the new print edition of the Collins English Dictionary, as chosen by Twitter users. #Twictionary has been getting lots of attention over the last few days, both from the media… Read More

Speak English Better Than 90% of Native Speakers by Mastering This Difficult Poem

13th May 2014

First published in 1922 by Dutch writer, traveller and observer of the English language Gerard Nolst Trenité, also known as Charivarius, The Chaos contains around eight hundred of the worst irregularities in English pronunciation and spelling – skilfully versified into rhyming couplets. Written for the benefit of the English… Read More

Thanks to your word submissions, Lucy Mangan is now an expert is the ancient art of ‘washigami’

13th May 2014

Sometimes I feel that I am more therapist than word-nerdery-repositress-slash-neologism-sentinel. Sometimes the words and the definitions that cross my path seem less contributions to the global word stock than howling cries of pain from hearts that lie bleeding on the page. And so we turn – slowly, gently, in a… Read More

Eight killer business words and phrases

8th May 2014

We once asked a group of business students what was the most important phrase a business person travelling abroad needed to know in a foreign language. They all volunteered things like ‘Hello’, ‘Please’ and ‘Thank you’, all useful words but they miss the point. Then someone volunteered the killer phrase,… Read More

10 American English Words To Baffle The Brits

8th May 2014

Brits and Americans often have no trouble understanding one another. However, there are still a few words and phrases that remain completely unalike. 1. Cookie These are called biscuits in the UK. Cookie in US English comes from the Dutch koekje, a small crisp cake. Dutch… Read More

Lucy Mangan is LIMH at this week’s new CollinsDictionary.com word submissions!

29th Apr 2014

Thank you, tyler.hartleb, thank you for supplying the abbreviation I have needed my whole digital life: ‘LIMH‘. It stands for “Laughing in my head” and thus at last gives an almost literally voiceless community a voice. Or at least a presence, which is actually… Read More

Instagram, Sahara Dust, and the Cambridge Factor – Trending Words April 2014

28th Apr 2014

T S Eliot once called April “the cruellest month”, but that’s pretty harsh for a month that begins with April Fool’s Day and usually includes Easter. Okay, so some April Fool’s pranks can go a bit too far. We began the month with actor James Franco chatting up… Read More

Lucy Mangan is going on a ‘microadventure’. No ‘wackaging’ involved

16th Apr 2014

We get the technology we deserve. In the pipeline (or it may be already here – my toddler is ill, I haven’t been outside for a week and I don’t know anyone over three or under 30 who can keep me up to date, so who knows what’s happening?) is… Read More

Some of the best words that never were

3rd Apr 2014

A user of this website recently left a comment asking why we had chosen to mark as ‘rejected’ a word that another user had submitted. After all, the word had been invented and used by that person, so surely it should be included in the dictionary. This… Read More