The Oxford Dictionary of New Words - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0198602359 ISBN 13: 9780198602354

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1999

Synopsis

New words are the footprints of time. To recite some of the phrases that have become popular in the 1990s--Generation X, Prozac, road rage, shock-jock, voice mail--is to fast-forward through our recent history. Now, in the second edition of The Oxford Dictionary of New Words, readers can savor a smorgasbord of new words and phrases that have been coined--or popularized--in the last ten years.

Here are hundreds of intriguing, informative articles that provide the pronunciations, definitions, sample sentences, origins, and informal histories of over 2,500 new words and phrases. The editors have drawn words from politics, the environmental movement, technology, business, sports, and entertainment; politically charged terms such as tree-hugger, feminazi, and lipstick lesbian, and popular expressions such as "the ULULULULUL from hell" (waiter from hell, dentist from hell) and "been there, done that." Two-thirds of the articles are new to this edition, and the others--on still-prominent words included in the first edition--have been either revised or newly written. This useful and engaging resource is the first place to turn for information when faced with new words and phrases, and will be a gold mine of language for word lovers everywhere.

About this title

Review:

The image of the linguist as a stodgy old stick-in-the-mud, circling misplaced commas and mumbling in dead tongues, is just not true--at least not entirely. Any linguist worth her salt knows that languages change and keeps up with those changes. To make that task easier, the folks at Oxford University Press have put out a dictionary of more than 2,500 new words and phrases that have been popularized since the late 1980s. Editors Elizabeth Knowles and Julia Elliott provide definitions, usage notes, and etymologies for jelly shoes, road rage, and hot-desking, not to mention tree-hugger, feminazi, McJob, get a life, and not! The English language is alive and kicking, and Oxford has its finger on the semantic pulse.

About the Author:

About the Editors:
Elizabeth Knowles is Managing Editor in the Quotation dictionaries group, and Julia Elliott is Senior Editor in the Thesauruses group, both at Oxford University Press, UK.

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0198602359
• ISBN 13: 9780198602354
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 368
• Editor: Knowles Elizabeth, Elliott Julia