Oxford University
New to the Oxford English Dictionary this September
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.
Every quarter, we update the OED by revising versions of existing entries as well as defining new words and senses. These updates subtly broaden our understanding of the English language and its use around the world.
10 highlights from this quarter’s update
1. We added more than 400 new words, phrases, and senses to the OED this quarter, including hot yoga, fantabulosa, will-they-won’t-they, and auto-reply.
2. By happy coincidence this update lands just before International Coffee Day (1 October). Coffee drinks new to the OED include Café Cubano, café con leche, cafezinho, and cold brew.
3. This release sees additions from across the world, including contributions from East Africa, Caribbean, Bermuda, New Zealand, Wales, and the Isle of Man. Learn more from Executive Editor, Danica Salazar.
4. From shadeesh to hamma, we welcome several Bermudian English additions, as part of a valuable new collaboration with the Bermuda Spelling Bee. This is an annual spelling competition for 9- to 13-year-olds designed to foster a love of language and learning among young Bermudians.
5. Several new words for supernatural creatures appear in this update. From Welsh folklore we have a bwbach, from Caribbean folklore a jablesse, and we also have the Trinbagonian addition of douen.
6. An important feature of the OED’s New Words team’s work is its Monitor Lexicography (MonLex) programme. This is our way of monitoring, collecting, and prioritizing contemporary language for inclusion in the OED, looking at sources including trending words on language corpora, social media, material generated by our reading programmes, and suggestions made by colleagues on our own internal database. Every other quarter we gather the items collected and assess them for inclusion, prioritizing so that we include the most relevant and important.
Some new words added this quarter from our MonLex programme include: the social media sense of timeline, the sense of slammed meaning very busy or overcome with work, the chiefly North American English word bothsidesism, and lastly, overnight oats.
7. Craig Leyland, Executive Editor, notes the welcome of two reference related words – thesaural and mountweazel. The latter is defined as ‘an invented or fake entry in a reference work (esp. a dictionary or an encyclopedia), a database, etc., typically used by the publisher to identify plagiarism that constitutes an infringement of copyright’. Does the OED contain any mountweazels? We can’t say, of course. You can read more from Craig about both here.
8. More than 700 entries have been revised as part of this update, including ‘gym’ and ‘kanaka’ words. Read more in this commentary from Andrew Ball, OED Editor.
9. The words newly revised this quarter show an especially rich variety of etymologies. In the month that the Bayeux Tapestry goes on view in London, it is fitting that we have a healthy crop of Middle English borrowings from French, or more specifically Anglo-Norman (i.e. French as used in medieval Britain), including doubt, equity, fantasy, and garner. Read more from Philip Durkin, OED Deputy Chief Editor.
10. And finally, being asked about ‘scone’ usually raises a groan for pronunciation editors, but it was good to have the opportunity to provide the ‘skoon’ pronunciation appropriate for the Stone of Scone in this update. Hear more from Catherine Sangster, OED Pronunciation Editor.
Explore the update in more depth here.
We have been named a finalist in the Legal Technology Awards 2026.
Oxford Law Pro, our knowledge resource for legal professionals and researchers, has been recognized in the Responsible Use of AI in Legal Services category. This recognition follows two recent award wins in the Society for Scholarly Publishing’s EPIC Awards, for both Hosting Platform Features and Branding.
Hosted by Netlaw Media, the Legal Technology Awards recognize leadership, innovation, and technology as well as the individuals, teams, and suppliers transforming the future of legal services.
The Responsible Use of AI in Legal Services category recognizes organizations that demonstrate exemplary governance, robust risk management, and strong leadership in the ethical integration of artificial intelligence.
Mirkka Jokelainen, Product Portfolio Manager, said:
“Having made the list of finalists is such a meaningful recognition of OUP’s work with legal professionals, and means a lot for the whole Oxford Law Pro team. AI is a tool which enables lawyers to benefit from our decades strong work of publishing the best legal commentary and analysis, and from the start, we have wanted to make sure the new capabilities enhance lawyers’ work and are easy to use. Responsible AI is about more than just technology. It’s about helping legal professionals access trusted expertise, realize value quickly, and adopt new capabilities with confidence.”
Winners of the Legal Technology Awards will be announced on 18 November.
About Oxford Law Pro
Launched last year, Oxford Law Pro brings together more than 9,000 journal articles and over 600 award-winning, peer-reviewed books from our portfolio of authoritative and timely legal analysis, all on our Oxford Academic platform.
Oxford Law Pro is powered by a conversational AI research assistant, developed with Silverchair, making legal research more efficient without compromising on accuracy. Unlike generic AI search tools, Oxford Law Pro employs retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) frameworks specifically tuned for legal content, ensuring responses are grounded exclusively in OUP’s authoritative materials.
The platform equips legal professionals with tools that match the realities of modern practice, and by reducing time spent on initial source identification, the AI assistant allows them to allocate more time to substantive analysis, strategic thinking, and client service.
You can find out more about Oxford Law Pro here.
“Our research into AI disclosure follows our 2024 survey, which revealed a wide range of initial perceptions towards AI. Two years on, AI use is more widespread, but there remain major differences in how researchers are adopting, applying, and disclosing these tools.
“At OUP, we’ve developed AI guidelines for authors with the view that the scholarship we publish must remain valued and protected. We regularly review these against industry guidelines and consider any feedback to ensure clear guidance for authors.
“We continue to prioritize working with the research community to develop clear publishing standards that support readers and authors in an AI-enabled world.”
We’ve launched our AI Study Assistant on Business, Politics, and Science Trove, following the successful launch of the tool on Law Trove in October 2025.
This means that all our Trove platforms now offer students enhanced functionality through AI to increase their efficiency when studying by helping them to find and engage with relevant content.
Troves—in business, law, politics, and science—offer discipline-specific collections of higher education textbooks from across our market-leading lists. Rolling out the AI Study Assistant more widely means that students from these disciplines can generate accurate summaries, authoritative answers, and targeted quizzes to support understanding, revision, and exam preparation. Moreover, responses and quizzes generated by the assistant only draw from our trusted textbook content, guaranteeing that students are accessing reliable source material.
Building on the Law Trove AI Study Assistant
To expand the tool across our other Trove platforms, we further developed the assistant to meet user needs for Science Trove.
As with Law Trove, we have taken a conscientious approach to embedding AI into Business, Politics, and Science Trove by empowering users to develop the skills they need to apply critical thinking to their use of AI not just academically, but for their future careers through the specialized module on AI literacy. The module is available for all Trove users and covers generative AI fundamentals, academic integrity, critical thinking, and effective prompting, so users can use the AI Study Assistant responsibly and with confidence.
Shaped through user testing with lecturers and students, the tool has been designed with real teaching and learning needs at its heart, ensuring that Trove stands at the forefront of combining innovative technology with high-quality educative resources for higher education institutions and students.
We look forward to hearing how students interact with the tool across Trove in the new academic year and beyond. You can learn more about the development of the AI Study Assistant and the positive reception it has had on Law Trove here.
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