The word 'cusp' (a point) was borrowed from Latin in the 16th century, and has largely remained a specialised term. In various sciences, it refers to the point where curved lines meet, for example, the end of a spear-shaped leaf, the ...
More »The flagging fortunes of ‘flog’ in Australian parlance
Creators of new words have to be wary of entering an overcrowded market. The digital-age use of flog was originally as a shortening for food blog, and then achieved notoriety in the sense of fake blog. These flogs, dating back ...
More »Strictly speaking: raise a glass to ‘booze words’
Most English-speaking communities have colloquial words for alcoholic beverages in general. So Australians and New Zealanders share booze, grog and plonk (as well as derivatives such as booze bus, grog shop and plonked) in which the alcoholic allusion is generic. ...
More »Strictly speaking | Solastalgia
The suffix -algia comes from the Greek word meaning ‘pain’, and is normally used in medical terms that categorise physical distress, as in myalgia (‘muscle pain’) and odontalgia (‘toothache’). By contrast, the less specialised word nostalgia refers to mental anguish, ...
More »Strictly speaking | Connectography
This word owes its origin to one person’s creative thinking, in the title of Parag Khanna’s Connectography: Mapping the future of global civilization. It was published less than a year ago (April 2016) along with a TED Talk, and with ...
More »Strictly speaking | Phubbing
Creating new words is an unpredictable business. How was Lewis Carroll to know that amongst the brillig, gimble and uffish of “Jabberwocky”, chortle would gain popular acceptance? Did we really need a new term for laughing? Advertising agency McCann thought ...
More »Strictly Speaking | LUXED and LUSH
An international hotel advertisement in the Sydney Morning Herald invites readers to get luxed on a stopover in Singapore. Those old enough to remember the ubiquitous bar of Lux soap might wonder if this is just an upgrade on the ...
More »Strictly Speaking | Atas
English has always extended itself with words from other languages. Recent additions to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) have a certain East Asian flavour to them. Literally, in some cases, with the inclusion of plenty of culinary words such as ...
More »Strictly speaking | Ruburb
The concept of suburbia may seem a contemporary one. In fact, the word suburb, literally meaning ‘below the city’, goes back to the 14th century, and is mentioned in one of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales as a hiding place for robbers ...
More »Strictly speaking | BOOMLET
In the wake of the Brexit referendum and economic pessimism in Britain, an optimistic commentator in the EU-based Politico was forecasting a boomlet for financial consultants and lobbyists in London and Brussels. A boomlet? Is that a ‘real’ word or ...
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