Language Lovers

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

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

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

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 settlers in… Read More

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

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 all we really want. Read More

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

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

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

Super-G, Beer and Bingo – Trending Words in March 2014

March may be the first month of Spring, but there was no indication in the weather, or in the news cycle, at the beginning of the month. We started well enough with the Paralympic Games in Sochi, Russia, during which Kelly Gallagher of Northern Ireland and her… Read More

Lucy Mangan learns some new words from the Greek Orthodox Church, as well as a new type of pasta

So, it looks like there may be an English word for schadenfreude after all. According to WritersCramp, it’s ‘epicaricacy‘ and covers the same convulsion of joy in another’s misfortune that the Teutonic loan does. What we lose in “Tuh – trust the Germans to have a word for… Read More