OxfordWords blog
Latest articles
What do you call the man in the red suit?
Last year on the OxfordWords blog, we posted a picture of a rather rotund gentleman, with a white beard and moustache, and some fetching white faux-fur trimmings on his red suit and hat. We asked ‘Who is this?’ and gave you a choice of Santa Claus, Father Christmas, Santa, Saint Nick, Santy, Kris Kringle, [...]
Ye Gods! Praise the Days
In this last week of December 2012, I am gazing at the calendar above my desk and wondering how it is possible that in a few days I will have to hang up a new calendar for a new year (as my past gets longer, are the years getting shorter??). My mind wanders as I [...]
Tolkien’s etymologies
I’m tremendously excited about the film version of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit that’s coming out in the UK this week. As a child, my favourite film was the 1978 animated version of The Lord of the Rings by Ralph Bakshi. When I say it was my favourite, I suppose I mean that it [...]
A Christmas Carol text analyser
A Christmas Carol was first published 169 years ago, on 19 December 1843. It tells the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, a bad-tempered skinflint who hates Christmas and all it stands for, and his transformation after a ghostly visitor pays Scrooge a visit one Christmas Eve. A Christmas Carol was met with instant success and was [...]
Silver houses and marmalade castles: interpreting The Nutcracker
A hundred and twenty years ago, the curtains rose at the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg for the premiere of a new ballet. With a score by Tchaikovsky and choreography by Marius Petipa, the ballet was set to be a hit. After all, the pair had produced The Sleeping Beauty, which was hugely successful, just [...]
From jumbles to gingersnaps: the origins of cookie names
It may be difficult to do so whilst piling them into one’s maw, but did you ever think about how Christmas cookies came to possess such deliciously eclectic names? Jumbles. Thumbprints. Snickerdoodles. Gingersnaps. Rugelach. Sand tarts. Macaroons. Kiffles. And these are only a few of the hundreds of types treasured in American households during the [...]
Christmas in Spain: Kings and caganeres
With every passing year, British Christmas seems to start earlier. As soon as the high street is finished with Halloween, Christmas gets going, with all the Slade and tinsel that that entails. Things are done differently in Spain. Navidad (from the Latin nativitas, also the root of the English nativity) officially kicks off with the [...]
Hip-hop on ‘ice’
This week the Oxford English Dictionary published their final quarterly update for 2012. Among the recently revised entries is the noun ice, which has got me thinking about the lyrics of “Thrift Shop”, a song by the hip-hop duo Macklemore & Ryan Lewis. Check it out: I’m just pumped, I bought some sh*t from a thrift shop. Ice [...]
Blog categories
- Competitions and quizzes (22)
- Dictionaries and lexicography (88)
- English in use (246)
- Grammar and writing help (51)
- Interactive features (41)
- OED Appeals (3)
- Other languages (38)
- Varieties of English (22)
- Word origins (135)
- Word trends and new words (83)
Take our poll:
Top stories
Oxford Dictionaries Twitter
- On this day in 1843, Dickens' 'A Christmas Carol' was published. Explore the text with our latest interactive analyser: http://t.co/f7aXrMqu
- Planning to sing festive songs this week? Remember that if you're in the UK, you'll be going 'carolling', but in the US you'd be 'caroling'.