From sploot to EGOT: discover the latest words added to the Collins Dictionary

25th Feb 2021

Have you ever seen your pet sploot? You may well have done, even if you didn’t know that there was a word for it. This is what an animal does when, instead of tucking its legs neatly under its own body, it lies flat on its… Read More

Spanish word of the week: claro

24th Feb 2021

This week's Spanish word of the week is claro. Claro is a word you’ll very often hear in conversation. The more you use it appropriately in your own conversation, the more natural your Spanish will sound. Read More

9 words to decode Reddit’s GameStop trading lingo

19th Feb 2021

The events surrounding trading in the shares of the American company GameStop have provided us with one of the more intriguing news stories of recent times. The story of a bunch of small investors threatening to bring some of the giants of the financial world to their knees by taking… Read More

9 words to sweep you into the world of Bridgerton

10th Feb 2021

2021 is set to be the renaissance of Regency romance, as Netflix viewers indulge themselves in the delicious escapism of Bridgerton, a period romance with a modern twist. The salacious gossip of the anonymous Lady Whistledown, who has stepped gracefully into the role of a Georgian Gossip Girl, has kept… Read More

TikTok’s Sea Shanties: Explore their vocabulary

27th Jan 2021

Well, blow me down. Improbable as it may seem, there’s no denying that sea shanties are having a very real moment in the spotlight. Near the end of 2020, a video from a young Scottish singer started to do the rounds on the social media platform… Read More

Ten US political terms to baffle Brits

19th Jan 2021

(Updated from 7 US political terms to baffle the Brits, published on 7th November 2020) The United States will inaugurate a new president on January 20th when Joe Biden will be sworn in as the forty-sixth person to hold the office. While observers in Europe… Read More

Word exploration: vaccines, vaccinations and jabs

15th Jan 2021

In what the PM has described as a ‘final sprint’, the new year got off to a flying start with a COVID-19 vaccination rollout underway across the UK. In early January, Her Majesty The Queen and HRH The Duke of Edinburgh were vaccinated. The Palace decided… Read More

From filk to derp: discover the latest words added to the Collins Dictionary

8th Jan 2021

Why do we need to keep adding new words to the English language? Can’t we just make do with the ones we have already? These are reasonable questions, but the fact is that new words do keep entering the language. To illustrate why this happens, let’s look at a cross-section… Read More

New hope for the New Year

28th Dec 2020

New Year’s Eve is traditionally when we fix our gaze firmly forward in hope, having cast a backward glance at the year just ended. Which, despite the negatives, saw a healthy increase in good-neighbourliness and kindness as demonstrated, for instance, by caremongering. I feel hopeful that… Read More