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.