english language

What put the corona in the coronavirus?

If you had never heard of a coronavirus before this year, you certainly will have now. As alarm increases about the spread of a new strain of this virus around the world, some people have been wondering about the significance of the word ‘… Read More

How the Truth Got Cancelled

For many observers, the 2010s were the decade of fake news. In 2016, Donald Trump appeared to use the word ‘bigly’, which soon caught on as a humorously intensifying adverb, even though it turned out that Trump himself had actually said ‘big league’. And ‘bigly’ itself is attested as an… Read More

What does ‘quid pro quo’ mean?

Latin is a famously dead language, but it was busy enough while it was alive that echoes of it can still be heard in the modern world. One particular Latin phrase has been front and centre in the news recently as the impeachment enquiry into the activities of President Trump… Read More

3. Gender and identity: new words in COBUILD English Usage

In the next two blog posts about the new edition of COBUILD English Usage, Julie Moore looks at some of the changes in language usage that emerged from research for the new edition. In this post, she explores how language shifts reflect changing ideas about gender and identity. Traditionally,… Read More

2. COBUILD English Usage: Changes in vocabulary and grammar

In the second of our blog posts about the new edition of COBUILD English Usage, Penny Hands details some of the findings that came out of the team’s research into the ways in which new words and uses are created, and usage changes in vocabulary and grammar. The second… Read More
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1. COBUILD English Usage: Updating the examples

In the first of our blog posts about the new edition of COBUILD English Usage, Penny Hands details some of the changes she made to the examples to ensure they reflect changes in society, and ponders on how future-proof these changes are likely to be. One of our aims… Read More

The 1960s: words then and now

The 1960s saw a boom in space exploration, with humans finally travelling to and experiencing the wonders of the regions beyond earth. But which words were flourishing in this revolutionary decade? Naturally, advances in space flight brought some previously specialist vocabulary into general use. We made acquaintance with previously unfamiliar… Read More
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