10 highlights from the March 2026 Oxford English Dictionary update

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is a historical dictionary, containing over 500,000 entries and 3.5 million quotations to capture over 1,000 years of English. We update the OED every quarter, revising versions of existing entries as well as defining new words and senses, all subtly broadening our understanding of the English language.

10 highlights from this quarter’s update 

1. This update contains more than 500 new words, phrases, and senses, including doomscrolling and to touch grass. The OED Executive Editor, Craig Leyland, shares more about the words added this quarter in our new words notes.

2. With more than 950 revised senses, we’ve updated the entries relating to various major word families, such as bounce, heal, and drop. Word groups such as these are fundamental, wide-ranging, and productive elements of English. Through the centuries they appear in new contexts, in new locations, and are adapted by people to fit their changing circumstances. For example, we now show that people have talked of bouncing babies on their knees since at least 1836, of healing gardens since 1707, and of drop nets being used by fishermen since 1695. 

3. Our entry for charismatic shows a new sense, where it’s used to designate animals as particularly appealing to humans, and therefore popular with conservation causes that use them to gain support.

4. OED editor, Jeffrey Sherwood, uncovers the history of the word snob, which originally meant almost the opposite of what it means today.

5. We also recognize jelly as an adjective to cover a more recent use meaning ‘jealous’.

6. As part of our World English programme, this release sees additions from Hong Kong, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, South Africa, and Ireland. Find out more in our release notes by OED Executive Editor, Danica Salazar.

7. In Malaysian and Singaporean English, agak-agak denotes guesswork or estimation, and is most frequently used in the context of a particular way of cooking, in which ingredients are added based on estimation and intuition rather than accurate measurement.

8. The Hong Kong pastry, pineapple bun, does not contain pineapple, but its cracked, baked topping resembles the skin of this fruit. Meanwhile, a boodle fight is a communal meal at which different kinds of food are laid out, typically on banana leaves, and eaten with the hands.

9. Ah sure look or ah sure look it, dating to 2011 and 1986 respectively, is a colloquial phrase used by Irish people to introduce or emphasize a statement, or to express resignation or acceptance of a situation.

10. We are now providing multiple audio pronunciations for some British and U.S. transcriptions. Find out more in this commentary from Holly Dann, pronunciation editor.

Explore the update in more depth here.