Macquarie Dictionary Word of the Year 2016 in the news
A collection of some media coverage of Word of the Year 2016.
Blogs
The Editor’s take on the Word of the Year 2016
My father was trained as a journalist in the days when newspapers cared about their reputations as disseminators of information that was accurate and reliable. It wasn’t just a legal anxiety, it was an organisational pride in the quality of their news reporting. He told me that you can’t half-know something. You either know it or you don’t. Read more…
Lewis Carroll’s coinages
Lewis Carroll contributed some of the most inspirational writing in history to the world. With his remarkable manipulation of language, he captured the imaginations not only of children, but of aspiring writers, readers and everyone else who came in contact with his word. Read more…
Classic, antique cards from the Macquarie Dictionary catalogue
Here at the Macquarie Dictionary, we have maintained our card catalogue from the early 1980s. It’s in more or less pristine condition, and contained within are hundreds of thousands of original words and definitions from the very first edition of our dictionary. Read more…
The Committee’s Choice for Word of the Year 2016 goes to…
The Committee’s Choice for the 2016 word of the Year goes to fake news. Honourable mentions go to enby and halal snack pack.
Do you agree or disagree with the Committee? Have your say and vote now!
What’s your Word of the Year?
Here at Macquarie Dictionary, we like to let the year end completely before we make a decision on which word to crown Word of the Year. We have a basic policy that all the candidates are drawn from words which have been selected and researched and written into the dictionary during the year… Read more…
Expanding your vocabulary with the Macquarie Thesaurus
A thesaurus is a treasure trove of new words for you to discover. More people write now than ever before, whether it be in messages, emails, articles, stories, or anything else. It’s important to keep the mind sharp and the vocabulary growing and one of the many ways to do this is to utilise a thesaurus…. Read more…
What does it all mean?
Many words have more than one definition, and these are listed in each entry numerically. But is there any order to this or is it organised chaos? In this case, thankfully, there are specific rules for how definitions are ordered. In a word such as joke or kangaroo or any word where there are multiple meanings, the following applies… Read more…
Should these words go in the Macquarie Dictionary?
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…
Your top ten blogs of 2016
Counting down from popularity, here’s what you and the rest of Australia (and the world) wanted to know about in 2016. Read more…
Odd encounters with inflected forms
The English language has the capacity to create new forms, often by fusing two existing words to create one word with a new meaning, such as gasbag or chinwag. This is by far the most common way of expanding our lexicon. Read more…
Should these words go in the Macquarie Dictionary?
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…
Words that last
Recently I gave a talk at Nunawading Library in Melbourne. The discussion afterwards was on various current usage problems, including the use of the word literally as a marker of emphasis with no real meaning but a functionality that seems to be much enjoyed by many people in spoken and written language… Read more…
How well do you know your phobias?
How well do you know your phobias? Take the Halloween edition phobia quiz to find out!
Wibble-wobble and boing
My attention has been drawn to the creation of the new verb, to wibble-wobble, meaning ‘to prevaricate’. This is a contribution of Mathias Cormann who made reference to the nursery rhyme, Jelly on a Plate which has the verse… Read more…
Should these words go in the Macquarie Dictionary?
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…
Should these words go in the Macquarie Dictionary?
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…