Hard times bring new words

The New York Times has published an interesting article on the new words and terms being used by Europe’s citizens as a result of the economic crisis. Some of the terms are lifted directly from English. Take “spreaddite acuta”, or acute spreaditis, used by the Italian media to describe Italy’s bond-yield problems. Or “downgradare”, referring to …

Words that set our teeth on edge

I had a Twitter conversation recently with Ashleigh Grange of Plush Text Communications and Janine Libbey of P & L Translations about words we dislike. Ashleigh’s language bugbear of the day was incentivise, Janine’s prioritise and mine diarise. My current handbag-book for the train and doctors’/dentists’ waiting rooms is “The English Language” by David Crystal. I was surprised to find …

And the one millionth English word is…

… “Web 2.0”, according to The Global Language Monitor, which uses statistical techniques to document, analyse and track trends in language the world over, with a particular emphasis on Global English. The site is a bit of a hotch-potch, with sections on Politically Correct Speech, Bushisms, Fashion, Hollywood, Obama, the Olympics, and lots more. It …

One million words (well, nearly)

Writing in today’s Telegraph, Simon Winchester celebrates the joys of English, “our truly global language”, which should soon number 1 million words. Here’s his eye-witness account of the moment one of them was created. And so, in every gruesome detail, and in an open-plan Thameslink carriage, I related the saga: the sharpening of the blade, …