From 'buxomy' to lurid: behold the new Oxford dictionary
Jul 26, 2004
by Bev Betkowski
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Dr. John Considine: English redefined. |
Dr. John Considine, a University of Alberta English professor, is waiting to find out. As a consultant for the esteemed publication, he is constantly on the lookout for new terms to add, as the Oxford's caretakers revise and modernize it in an ongoing project expected to wrap up in 2020.
He doesn't often have a new word to send in, but felt 'buxomy' might warrant consideration. "One of the tricky things is deciding how much evidence has to be demanded before a word goes in. The people at Oxford may want as many as 15 examples."
Considine used the Google online search engine, and found the term was popular in newspapers. "I was able to find a fair number of examples." He's still waiting to hear from his bosses on his ample example.
It's all in a day's work for Considine, who's been teaching at the U of A since 1996, and specializes in the history of dictionaries. In pursuit of a better Oxford dictionary, he spends his spare time "rattling around in the university library like one of those little balls in a pinball machine. I've gotten to know the (U of A) library system very well."
He pores over texts of all kinds, searching out word origins and definitions. Additions are also being made to the Canadian version of the dictionary (new entries include the now-famous 'double-double', a coffee with two creams and two sugars), though Considine, who began doing volunteer research as a student while actually attending Oxford University, works solely on the English version.
Currently, he's plowing his way through words beginning with the letters 'PE', and finds the work anything but musty. It even has some "lurid moments," Considine added. One of his draft entries is the word 'petrobrusian', a 12th century heretical group from southern France which rejected infant baptism and mass prayers for the dead.
"The petrobrusians had a colourful founder of the sect. He didn't believe in praying in front of crucifixes, so he tried to burn them whenever he got hold of them, and one day he made a bonfire, and the people who had been praying pushed him into the bonfire."
New entries to the Oxford reveal an emerging trend, Considine noted. "There is an increasing engagement with the diversity of English and with the diversity across English-speaking communities."
New terms that have made it into the new and improved Oxford include 'Glasgow Kiss'--a polite euphemism for a head-butt, as well as an entire section devoted to cyberculture. There's also 'pilates', 'kiteboard' (extreme recreation involving a kite and a surfboard) and on a solemn note, 'stolen generation', an Australian term referring to Aborigines who were taken from their homes and placed in institutions, ironically, to learn about English language and culture.
Dictionaries are a reflection of an ever-changing society, Considine said. "The history of language does sum up the history of the culture of its speakers. Everything which has mattered to English speakers all over the world for nearly 1,000 years, has an English word for it. A dictionary is the single most powerful tool for recovering the intellectual and imaginative and social life of the past."
Related story
'Tis the season for Chrismukkah (ExpressNews, Dec. 15, 2003): http://www.expressnews.ualberta.ca/expressnews/articles/news.cfm?p_ID=5418&s=a
Related links – internal
Information on Dr. John Considine: http://www.humanities.ualberta.ca/english/full.html
The U of A Department of English and Film Studies website: http://www.humanities.ualberta.ca/english/
Related links – external
The Oxford English Dictionary website:
http://www.oed.com/
The Canadian Oxford Dictionary website: http://www.oup.com/ca/genref/dictionaries/
This article originally appeared in the University of Alberta's ExpressNews