ian brookes

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

11 words and phrases from Nottingham

3rd Dec 2020

Eh up, me duck! Here are a few words and phrases you might hear in Nottingham and the surrounding areas: 1. Eh up! Eh up is a friendly way of greeting someone: Eh up, Sam. Where are you off to? 2. cob A cob is a… Read More

7 US political terms to baffle Brits

2nd Nov 2020

The United States holds its presidential election on November 3rd after a long and sometimes rancorous campaign. While observers in Europe will have become accustomed by now to some of the terminology of the American political scene, with its caucuses, conventions, superdelegates, and running mates, some more arcane American political… Read More

From hiraeth to washi: discover the latest words added to the Collins Dictionary

23rd Oct 2020

Language experts are in broad agreement that English has one of the richest vocabularies of any language. Speakers of English have about twice as many words at their disposal than speakers of Spanish or Chinese have. This abundance is due to the way English was born out of a collision… Read More

‘Hepatomegaly’ and ‘hydronephrosis’ are among the most frequently looked-up words in September

14th Oct 2020

You can get a certain insight into human nature from analysing the words that people look up in dictionaries. There are some words that seem to be of perennial interest, so if you compare the list of words that were looked up most often in March with the words that… Read More

From moonshoot to balconing: discover the latest words added to the Collins Dictionary

30th Sep 2020

The online version of the Collins Dictionary has just been updated again, with another batch of new words and meanings inspired by the events of the summer. Perhaps the most newsworthy word of the past month was moonshot, which hit the headlines thanks to Boris Johnson using it in… Read More

‘Collop’ and ‘kenspeckle’ are among the most frequently looked-up words in August

15th Sep 2020

In our recent blogs about which words are most commonly looked for on the Collins dictionary website, we have tended to stress how the searches reflect the changes in society brought about by the various stages of the global Covid-19 epidemic. But what is interesting about the list of words… Read More

From confirmation bias to owo: discover the latest words added to the Collins Dictionary

18th Aug 2020

The online version of the Collins Dictionary has just been updated again, with another batch of words being allowed in for the first time. These new words are a rather mixed bag, and they show the dictionary in both its serious and light-hearted moods. On the one hand, you can… Read More

Anticipation and rain check are among the most frequently looked-up words in July

11th Aug 2020

Perhaps the most striking thing about the list of words that people have looked up in the Collins Dictionary in July is that it no longer contains a lot of words that were being looked up earlier in the year. Back in March and April, the list was dominated by… Read More