macquarie 
The early European settlers had much to find words for in the Australian landscape and their choice was either to borrow from Aboriginal languages (kangaroo, dingo, budgerigar, coolibah) or take a word from British English, often British dialect, and stretch the original meaning to the new shape (wattle, creek, magpie, paddock). Read more…
It’s been a while since a politician has resorted to branding their opponents as un-Australian but we had an instance of it recently with Immigration Minister Peter Dutton applying it to pro-bono lawyers defending refugees. It has to be said that he was prompted to do it by radio broadcaster Alan Jones but he took it up willingly enough. Read more…
English borrows from many languages, but it has more trouble digesting some borrowed words than others. Of late we seem to have taken on board many more words from Japanese, mostly to do with food and drink. Read more…
We are always on the lookout for new, emerging and interesting words to add to the Macquarie Dictionary. In a time of global instant communication, these words are popping up faster and in vaster quantities than ever before. Read more…
You would think that the answer to this would be ‘after a suitable period of time’. For example, table comes from tabula, borrowed into Old English from Classical Latin. Read more…
Darryn King dropped by the office to have a chat with our editorial team about what goes on behind the scenes.
Read the full article | The Monthly, July 2017
Note: This article is behind The Monthly’s paywall.
We are always on the lookout for new, emerging and interesting words to add to the Macquarie Dictionary. In a time of global instant communication, these words are popping up faster and in vaster quantities than ever before. Read more…
A dictionary reader asked about the distinction between persons and people, both indicating plurality but having different connotations.
If we start with the etymologies of the two words we can see that they are coming from different directions… Read more…
Tweet us, comment and tag us in your most imaginative, outlandish and of course, fitting new terms. We’ve got a list of animals below, but don’t stop there, we want your most obscure, clever, interesting and fun takes on what makes an Aussie collective noun.
We’ll give our favourite entries prizes from the new Seventh Edition Macquarie Dictionary range. Read more…
This NAIDOC Week, we’re celebrating by sharing some fun facts around the many different Aboriginal languages and cultures in Australia. Read more…
