With the Macquarie staff back in the office along with thousands of other workers across Australia, we rediscovered some things we missed while working from home. This includes the Macquarie archive: several bookshelves stuffed with decades of dictionaries, manuals, slang guides and even film reels. We selected three titles from these dusty shelves to investigate … Read more
It’s the start of May, so here’s your monthly helping of new words that may enter the Macquarie Dictionary! Up first is a new word from the internet that has already been circulating in the media: goblin mode, a pattern of behaviour characterised by an embrace of indolence and slovenliness. It is apparently epitomised by … Read more
This week’s blog is a bit rough around the edges. Do you know a roughie? That is, a rude or crude person. I’m sure we’ve all been a roughie at times. Another definition of roughie is a swindle or shrewd trick, as in, he put a roughie over Bill yesterday. Perhaps because of the convict roots of Modern Australia, Australian English contains … Read more
Take the next left and the next, and another left after that. This week we’re doing blockies: a single circuit of a vehicle around a street block, usually doing only left hand turns. As one contributor to the Australian Word Map put it, to do a blockie means, ‘to go round the block very fast in a usually noisy car, often … Read more
With the Federal election almost upon us, we delved into our database to help you make sense of the slang and jargon your candidates have been spouting on the campaign trail. We’ve heard a lot about the dreaded gaffe during this election campaign. A gaffe is defined as a social blunder. Someone who is inclined to make … Read more
It’s April 1st, and we all know what that means – it’s New Words time! The first new word for your consideration is bike shedding. It refers to the tendency to spend a disproportionate amount of time on trivial matters or decisions because they are easier to consider. The word comes from a fictional example … Read more
This week, we have hacked out a space for all the hacks. When we searched hack in our database we had one election inspired word in mind: party hack, a long-time, loyal member of a political party, especially one who does menial work for the party, but there were just so many definitions of hack that we couldn’t resist … Read more
After a comprehensive, independent examination of the Junior Atlas of Indigenous Australia the book has been reintroduced for sale after it had been temporarily withdrawn. On 15 February Pan Macmillan Publishers put a temporary hold on further supply of the Junior Atlas of Indigenous Australia in light of concerns raised by some members of the public. A comprehensive, independent … Read more
We’re back again with five new words for the start of the new month! Our first word is hyperpop. It’s a term for a genre of music that heightens and exaggerates contemporary mainstream pop. Don’t you think all those P’s make it a pleasurable word to pronounce? On the other hand, we have the distinctly … Read more
February is here and with much of the country now back at work or school, with any luck you were able to return after a healthful and restful break. In that spirit, here are five new words themed around health and fitness. Have you been eating a lot of mango this summer? Perhaps you’ve heard … Read more
