I guess we are all comfortable with the idea that our language is gaining new words every day and that eventually these words will be added to our dictionaries.
The Second Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary contains full entries for 171,476 words in current use, and 47,156 obsolete words. The same source suggests that there are possibly a quarter of a million distinct English words including those not in the OED, and perhaps with various variations on stem words there may be nearly three quarters of a million English words still in existence.
For some time the ABC’s Word Map has been mapping Australian regionalisms - words, phrases or expressions used by particular language groups. It often comes as a surprise to students to learn that non-Australians, and recent immigrants who actually speak English, need help with Australianisms in our language. It is not just the obvious differences between spellings, but also words that we use here that are peculiar to our language. One Crime fiction reading group that I belong to has published a list of Australian slang and colloquialisms that may help non-Australian readers of the genre.
When first published in 1828 Webster’s dictionary had an estimated 70,000 words of American English. In 1909 Webster’s International Dictionary had 400,000 words. Webster’s dictionary is largely responsible for the distinctive American spellings of the English language in use today. These spellings and usage cause great confusion for Australian school students in particular who often can’t work out whether they should use an s or a z (organise or organize), double the consonant or not (travelled or traveled), or use re or er (centre or center). It still comes as a surprise to Americans to learn that their version of English differs to the British or Australian one.
The Macquarie Dictionary Online is the most up-to-date Australian dictionary available and contains over 112,000 “head words”, a total of 300,000 words and definitions, plus etymologies for some of our colloquialisms. (Where does `save someone’s bacon’ come from? And what about ‘on the wallaby’?) The Online dictionary also provides a New Aussie word of the Week
The Macquarie Dictionary asks readers to nominate a word of the Year.
The word of the year for 2007 was Pod slurping.
This is an example of a new word that has come into use because of web 2.0 technology:
Pod slurping, officially listed as a noun, is the downloading of large quantities of data to an MP3 player or memory stick from a computer.
Honourable mentions went to infomania, and to carbon footprint.
So because the English language in use is forever changing, then new words are being added constantly. It takes some time for them to be added to official dictionaries. But when do we take them out? How big can a dictionary get?
The following story relates to the Oxford University Press Junior Dictionary which is limited to 10,000 words. A decision has been made to drop some words associated with Christianity, the monarchy and British history.
Some of the words taken out:
Abbey, aisle, altar, bishop, chapel, christen, disciple, minister, monastery, monk, nun, nunnery, parish, pew, psalm, pulpit, saint, sin, devil, vicar
Coronation, duchess, duke, emperor, empire, monarch, decade
Some of the new words:
Blog, broadband, MP3 player, voicemail, attachment, database, export, chatroom, bullet point, cut and paste, analogue
The linguistic problems raised by new web 2.0 technologies are raised in I blog, you blog. Take a look at this suggested glossary. When will we see these words added to the official dictionaries? And what words will we cease using?
One Comment
I agree that the English language is changing all the time and that because of the information explosion, new words are being added every day to the lexicon of English. However, I feel that the lexicographer may have to limit him/herself to producing dictionaries that are more thematically slanted than huge general dictionaries, although the latter will always be needed. I don’t agree with some of the words taken out of the Oxford University Press Junior, as some of them directly reflect British history and culture , e.g. abbey, christen, pulpit (church) as these are important within the context of the development of the English language itself which was heavily influence by the church. Also words like coronation, duchess, etch reflect British history and the history of British social hierarchy which young people should at least be aware of, despite their opinions or beliefs.
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[…] Words, words, words I updated the ESL libguide today with a link both to too the “Australian Word Map” and the Macquarie Dictionary “Aussie word of the week.” Both of these were mentioned in a recent post in the education.au blog. I have also added the Word Map to the tag cloud of curriculum resources for teacher education. […]
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