Strictly speaking
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Strictly speaking | Retronym
Retronyms are newly coined words that remake or replace a pre-existing term in order to make room for innovations. For…
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Strictly speaking | Pyrocene
Geological time involves glacial – or even slower – change, so the rapid shifts in the terminology used to label…
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Strictly speaking | Telegamy
On first encounter, telegamy one might think it refers to TV gaming. But put alongside its nearest relatives in English…
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Strictly speaking | Algiarism
No reader of Campus Review, or indeed anyone working in higher education, can have missed the anxiety about the fresh…
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Strictly speaking | Munted
Most English words have a history which can be traced back through centuries and even millennia. So those which the…
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Strictly speaking | Calving
The impact of global warming has introduced new terms to our vocabulary, like anthropocene, biomass and carbon footprint. A word…
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Strictly speaking | eSports, e-sports or esports
These different spellings for “electronic sports” reflect the rapid takeup of video games as a competitive sport around the world.…
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Strictly speaking | Holistorexia
While we might recognise the verbal elements that make up the recently coined word holistorexia its meaning is not immediately…
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Strictly Speaking | RUOK
Amid concerns about other people’s mental health, this four-letter initialism/acronym for “Are you OK?” came alive in 2021. It was…
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Strictly speaking | Glitch
The social media app TikTok is responsible for countless trends that involve people doing, or saying, or showing things in…
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Strictly Speaking | Crispr foods
At first sight this could be a slogan for crunchier fish and chips from the deep freeze, something which food…
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Strictly Speaking | Skinship
Words and phrases are quite often borrowed from other languages to express a concept for which there is no existing…
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Strictly speaking | Genericide
The - cide suffix provides us with homicide, the most general word for killing another person, as well as specific…
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Strictly speaking | Sousveillance
The ever-increasing use of technology to monitor our daily activities – from CCTV cameras on every street to social media…
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Strictly Speaking | Regenuary
Following in the footsteps of Movember, one charity’s highly successful renaming of a month in the name of men’s health,…
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Strictly speaking | Proctoring
Just what does a proctor do? Essentially his role has always been to manage the affairs of others, as their…
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Strictly speaking | Zombie terms
Browsing through the Cambridge Dictionary’s new words blog, as you do, it’s noticeable how many new compounds are being formed…
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Strictly Speaking | Wonk
Informal words for other people we don’t identify with come and go, but wonk is unusual in having recently resurfaced…
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Strictly Speaking | Anthropause
It’s hard to imagine that Covid-19 has had any benefits, but one that is sometimes suggested is the potential healing…
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Strictly Speaking | Dai gou
Dai gou pronounced “die go” means “surrogate shopping” in Chinese. It refers to an informal kind of supply chain by…
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Strictly speaking | Exco
Acronyms are handy expressions for those who know what they stand for, and impossible for those who don’t. Exco encountered…
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Strictly speaking | Hygge
The Danish word hygge, meaning ‘a sense of comfort that engenders contentment’ has had various waves of popularity in the…
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Strictly speaking | Get-up
This informal word has multiple senses – not all overlapping – depending on which dictionary you consult. They do agree…
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Strictly speaking | Furlough
Lexicographers and linguists like to make graphs to show how the usage of words ebbs and flows. It’s a trivial…
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Strictly speaking | Frugal(ista)
In its sense of “sparing”, frugal is not a new word, and it often works as a negative when applied…
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