Aussie Slang vs Kiwi Slang – New Zild or Strine?

Are you wearing trunks and thongs or togs and jandals to the beach? Have you put your beers in the esky or the chilly bin, and are your sandwiches wrapped in aluminium or tin foil? Some of us have trouble discerning… Read More

Word-lover interview: Lynne Murphy of Separated By A Common Language

Word-lovers abound in the Collins Dictionary community, and so here begins an interview series with some of the ones we’re lucky enough to count as friends of the blog. Lynne Murphy blogs at Separated By A Common Language and tweets as @lynneguist. She’s interested in the differences… Read More

Balderdash! 11 English Words Whose Meanings Have Changed

To grin once meant to scowl, a girl was once a youth of either sex, and “hello” was originally used as an exclamation of surprise! Most of the words in everyday English have been in (and occasionally out of) circulation for centuries. But how and why have their meanings changed?… Read More

The 25 most-used words in English: Can you use them to learn a new language?

In just ten years Benny Lewis – seemingly ordinary Irishman turned polyglot and best-selling author – has become fluent in eight languages and reasonably chatty in several more. Benny does not spend his days knee deep in textbooks, or his evenings in language classes – instead… Read More

Lucy Mangan has a wrunkle about wanle and other new CollinsDictionary.com word submissions

Isn’t that always the way? You wait six months for a decent acronym and then two come along at once! Let’s begin with Gavin’s “WILLIE” (sorry, Gavin, but you didn’t really expect me to resist that, did you?). It stands for “Works in London, lives in Edinburgh”. I’ve… Read More

Twictionary & how the Collins Dictionary evolves every day

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 all about it… Read More

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

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’

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