New terms are constantly being created to label demographic groups, often by marketers wanting to target them. These terms are commonly formed using acronyms – as in the examples dinky (dual income no kids yet), kippers (kids in parents pockets ...

The distractions that tempt us whenever we turn on a device with an internet connection are boundless. We’re immediately bombarded with an array of apps, email and Facebook notifications, advertising pop-ups and clickbait. This sensory overload is the motivation behind ...

This unusual word was borrowed from Japanese less than 20 years ago for a special out-of-focus effect that up-to-date photographers may strive to achieve rather than avoid. In Japanese, the word is written as boke, but said with two-syllables (bow-kay) ...

Patches have been put to many purposes over the centuries of the word’s use, so that they may “repair, strengthen, protect, or decorate” a surface (Oxford English Dictionary online). In the 17th and 18th centuries, they could be a form ...

Prefixes in English often come in complementary pairs, such as ante-/post- (antemeridian/postmeridian), in-/out- (inside/outside), et cetera. A less well-known pairing is trans- (‘across’, ‘beyond’) and cis- (‘on this side of’), as in transmontane/cismontane – referring to something situated either beyond ...

It’s the time of year when people start creating ‘Best of 2015’ lists and dictionaries put out their ‘Word of the Year’. The Oxford Dictionaries’ choice has caused something of a furore, as it isn’t actually a word. It’s an ...

Kelp is an old word for seaweed, especially for the biggest in the family, the so-called giant kelp found on the Pacific coasts of America. Over the centuries, it was used in agriculture as a fertiliser, and as a pre-industrial ...

Bookaneer looks like a modern coinage – a word invented to make reading more attractive to small children by associating it with pirates. Indeed, an episode of the popular TV show for young learners, Sesame Street, has Elmo joining the ...

This curious word, abbreviated from vaporise, has had a short life in science fiction, as a verb meaning “to vaporise by means of a weapon” and more generally “to destroy completely”. Either meaning would apply in the citation of the ...

Swirling means having a partner of a different race. The term has been around since the early 2000s, according to urbandictionary.com, and has been brought to more prominence recently by Christelyn Karazin, who has written a book about it, and ...