It's always amusing to see which words the Oxford Dictionary of English has chosen to include in its tome each year. This year, though, it's even cooler than usual, because not only have they decided that the word 'podcast' is widely used enough to warrant inclusion, but I also know the person who coined it.
I can't imagine that. Coining a word that ends up in the ODE. Without wanting to sound too fangirlish, that is really fucking cool. Because of Ben, the word 'podcast' exists, and now it's in the dictionary. Wow.
UPDATE: Thanks to Chris W for pointing out that it's the confusingly titled Oxford Dictionary of English, not the Oxford English Dictionary. I think I'm going to start a competing title, the English Dictionary of Oxford. Or maybe the Dictionary of Oxford English. There's definitely a need.
Neologisms in the ODE
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Along with podcast came official recognition for chav.
I wonder if the definition for chav is “gets stuck in a goose bush for 2 days”?
A small correction:
This is not about the OED (the Oxford English Dictionary, a huge work used by academics, and these days accessed mostly through university or other collective subscriptions to the online database), but about the ODE, the Oxford Dictionary of English. The latter is a dictionary you can actually carry around with you in a version that's readable without a magnifying lens.
While the OED is supposed to collect everything, however rare, obsolete or new, the decision on what to include in the ODE, a reference work for the general public, is a much thornier one.
This has been misquoted widely in the blogosphere … some fact-checking is called for!
You're quite right. Although it's not fact-checking that's needed, it's basic reading skills. I just completely misread it, probably because I wasn't aware that there was an Oxford Dictionary of English, as opposed to the Oxford English Dictionary, and I'm really not surprised that everyone else has too.
Well, alright, not fact-checking then, but I didn't want to imply you and all the others were illiterate — which you aren't.
Ha ha ha. Well, sometimes I wonder about that. 😉
Maybe we should put it down to overexcitement about the inclusion of the word 'podcasting'?
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