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Blogs

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…

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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…

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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…

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Ever been phubbed?

A few years ago an executive from the McCann advertising agency approached me with an idea to document the process of the coining of a new word. He had a social phenomenon in mind for which he wished to find a word… Read more…

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