"In Life, there are many hundreds of common experiences, feelings, situations and even objects which we all know and recognize, but for which no words exist.
On the other hand, the world is littered with thousands of spare words which spend their time doing nothing but loafing about on signposts pointing at places.
Our job, as we see it, is to get these words down off the signposts and into the mouths of babes and sucklings and so on, where they can start earning their keep in everyday conversation and make a more positive contribution to society. " --
Douglas Adams, on
The Meaning of Liff. And because it's Adams, there are some internet pages for your enjoyment.
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Dec 1, 2011 -
18 comments
“The flapper movement is not a craze, but something that will stay,” the author maintained. “Many of the phrases now employed by members of this order will eventually find a way into common usage and be accepted as good English.” [more inside]
posted by timory
on Apr 10, 2011 -
83 comments
Howjsay.com is a unique online speaking dictionary that offers clear pronunciations of
English words,
phrases,
slang terms,
technical terms,
brand names,
proper names,
profanity, and
many foreign words, including
common variations and
alternatives. Astoundingly, the sound files
are not computer-generated -- every single one of the site's
138,152 entries are enunciated in the dignified tones of British academic and polyglot
Tim Bowyer, who has
steadily expanded its glossary over the years using logs of unsuccessful searches and direct user suggestions. The site is part of Bowyer's
Fonetiks.org family of language sites, and is also available as
a browser extension and as a mobile app for
iPhone/iPod and
Blackberry.
posted by Rhaomi
on Dec 23, 2010 -
27 comments
Climate change and the vuvuzela leave mark on Oxford Dictionary of English. Other words and phrases introduced for the latest edition include 'toxic debt', 'staycation', 'cheesebal' and 'national treasure'. To balance them out among the 2,000 or so new items there are a few more left-field choices.
Among them are 'cheeseball', which refers to someone or something lacking taste, style or originality, and the more disturbing phenomenon of 'hikikomori', the Japanese word for the acute social withdrawal that occurs in some teenage boys.
posted by Fizz
on Aug 19, 2010 -
18 comments
rialtoscuro n. disorientation when you step outside a movie theater into unexpected darkness, a twinge of jet lag from two hours of escapist fun which only diverts you from making the sequel to your youth—an old cult classic with wild shifts in tone, dropped subplots, major characters that appear out of nowhere only to vanish without explanation, and an ambiguous ending—but this time, it’s personal.
The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows
posted by xod
on Jun 22, 2010 -
25 comments
B-Rhymes is a rhyming dictionary that compares words based on their sounds, making it ideal for finding near-rhymes.
posted by archagon
on Feb 15, 2010 -
28 comments
I had this concept--after a strange dream, while scoping out the
I Dreamed I Saw st. Augustine tab in my just-in-case-it-disappears downloaded
dylanchords, of ...
St. Augustine as a slow moody slide in Open D ala Blind Texas Marlin. But then I got to wondering whether someone might have a chord dictionary online where a few variations on a first position
B Minor in Open D might be found. Voila! Achtung, Baby! Behold
Brian's huge chordlist collection. Oh, man, he's got your standard and open tunings on guitar plus mandolin, uke, banjos, bouzouki, pipa and lute. A living room guitarist's must have, no doubt, although a few more open tunings for pipa would have been nice...
[more inside]
posted by y2karl
on Dec 9, 2009 -
6 comments
Nihongodict is an AJAXy online Japanese-English dictionary. The list of matches auto-updates as you type. You can enter (or paste in) romaji, Kanji or kana, and use character maps for hiragana and katakana. Results can be
bookmarked.
[more inside]
posted by kurumi
on Mar 26, 2009 -
36 comments
Save the Words. Do lost words still have meaning? J
ust because society has neglected them doesn't make them any less of a word.
How do you get lost words back in the dictionary? With lexicogra
ph
ers scanning publications and other communication for words not curr
ently housed in the dictiona
ry, all y
ou need do is use your adopted words as often as possible.
Go,
Adop
t a Word.
Like gra
oc
rac
y.*
* - government by an old woman or women.
[more inside]
posted by Tufa
on Jan 29, 2009 -
37 comments
The Times Online:
Dictionary compilers at Collins have decided that the word list for the forthcoming edition of its largest volume is embrangled with words so obscure that they are linguistic recrement. Such words, they say, must be exuviated abstergently to make room for modern additions that will act as a roborant for the book. [more inside]
posted by Sailormom
on Sep 22, 2008 -
47 comments
The Dictionary of Coming to Terms with the Past (
Wörterbuch der 'Vergangenheitsbewältigung') examines over 1,000 German words that have Nazi connotations, such as
Endlösung (Final Solution) and
Selektion, It is featured in a
review by der Spiegel. Such loaded words still constitute a minefield for Germans today, as the Archbishop of Cologne
discovered last year in a situation
analogized to Senator Biden's use of the term "articulate" when referring to Senator Obama.
[more inside]
posted by Rumple
on Feb 17, 2008 -
49 comments
Lingro. Enter a website in the box to make all words on the page clickable. Available for English, Spanish, French, German, Italian and Polish.
posted by Lezzles
on Nov 20, 2007 -
15 comments
American Sign Language Flash Video Dictionary is a high quality, free dictionary with a huge number of signs. It includes specialized dictionaries of religious signs, conversational phrases, and ASL for babies. Unfortunately it's not possible to link to specific signs, but if you look inside you'll find words from "Abbreviate" to "Zoom" and phrases such as "I cannot fasten my belt," "has he been neutered?" "I already took a bath," "are you married?" and "I need a better firewall."
posted by alms
on Jul 25, 2007 -
17 comments
Hundreds of 'new' words in the new edition of the Collins English Dictionary (Reuters story), also via
BBC,
AP and
the Fox Television Stations (headline with no story, surprising since its publisher is another Rupert Murdoch subsidiary... but I digress). Some are obvious: hoodie, wiki, POTUS, plasma screen; some reflect our times: Gitmo, Londonistan, extraordinary rendition, carbon footprint; some are absolutely slangy: celebutante, McMansion, muffin top, man bag, disemvowel, barbecue stopper, girlfriend experience... Also in the book: ho. And not the version Santa Claus says. The new dictionary is available
"online, on mobiles, as a desktop application or integrated with Microsoft Word" - when you buy the deadtree edition.
posted by wendell
on Jun 4, 2007 -
22 comments
I know you people like words and language, and I
know you like Google, so when I found a clip of Erin McKean giving a
talk about dictionaries at Google, I thought "Normally, I wouldn't watch a 54-minute video of someone giving a talk, but this one was really interesting, and maybe my fellow MeFites will think the same thing." (Be sure and stick around for the Q&A session at the end; Google people, as you might expect, ask really interesting questions.) Erin McKean is not only the editor of
The New Oxford American Dictionary, she's got a
dressmaking blog. And if you don't feel like watching a video right now,
here's a transcript of an hour-long online chat at Wordsmith.Org from a couple years ago. (Video link via
Taccuino di traduzione.)
posted by languagehat
on Feb 17, 2007 -
34 comments
Wikiwords is a collaborative project to create a dictionary of all terms in all languages.
posted by anjamu
on Aug 11, 2006 -
18 comments
Were you a
minger, sporting a
mullet, looking a bit
naff when you were getting
mullered while out
on the pull, anytime before 1988? Or were you
posh and
minted, looking
snazzy after spending your
dosh to get a
nip and tuck before 1980? If so, the Oxford English Dictionary and the
BBC need you for their
Wordhunt – a call to help find the earliest verifiable usages of a
list of words from the past decades whose origin is still uncertain.
posted by funambulist
on Jan 9, 2006 -
28 comments
Merrian-Webster open dictionary "Have you spotted a new word or a new sense for an old word that hasn't made it into the dictionary yet? Well, here's your chance to add your discovery (and its definition) to Merriam-Webster's Open Dictionary"
posted by robbyrobs
on Dec 11, 2005 -
22 comments
Ka-BOOM! :: A Dictionary of Comicbook Words on Historical Principles, Based on the Latest Conclusions of the Most Dubious Wordologists & Comprising Many Hundreds of New Words which Modern Literature, Science & Philosophy have Neglected to Acknowledge as True, Proper & Useful Terms & Which Have Never Before Been Published in Any Lexicon
posted by anastasiav
on Nov 21, 2005 -
17 comments
The Dictionary of the Khazars "For all its delights, for all the structural novelty and the comic inventiveness of the imagery, it must be said there is something rather light and airy about this
book. It is fun to chase down
all the linkages between entries; but as they are conjoined more by the bubbling repetition of motifs and the requirements of the formal devices than by real narrative event or development, it is, as
Mr. Pavic himself suggests, a bit like working a crossword puzzle."
posted by dhruva
on Nov 20, 2005 -
9 comments
