Lexicographer at large
Lexicographer at large

Sue Butler AO

 
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LATEST BLOG

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quilter

The word quilter appears in the English Dialect Dictionary with the meaning ‘anyone or anything very large: a “whopper”’.  It lists Worcestershire, Warwickshire and Oxfordshire as dialects which had this word.

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New words

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cloth

This is the verb to cloth as used by cricket commentators.  He’s clothed the ball means that the batter has produced a mistimed lofted shot.

ZG: 2

An obscure bit of cricketing jargon.

brofessional

This is a term that has been part of American English for ten years, one which we are only just acquiring.  It is, of course, a blend of bro and professional and describes someone who is a confident player in the business world, so confident that he can be cool as well.  Particularly if his work is IT-related.

ZG: 8

The brofessionals in the US don’t seem to have lasted long.

quarter-life crisis

We used to have children who went through puberty to become adolescents who matured into adults who encountered middle age and finally old age.  But now we can insert into this pathway the quarter-life crisis.

ZG: 6

Another new term that reflects the difficulties encountered by young people in our society.

Usage matters

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five and two
optionality

A contributor noticed that one of Trump’s advisors claimed that Trump liked optionality.  She queried the acceptability of optionality.

wieldy

It is true that wieldy is a word that sounds very unwieldy but I was surprised to hear an ABC politics reporter using it in the sense of ‘awkward or difficult’.

Sue at TEDxSydney

"There are those who want the dictionary to censor aspects of language that they deem to be unsavoury or undesirable. But language moves on."

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Sue on the ABC's The Link

"I think with blasphemy you are actually going back to the 1600s where if you took the name of God in vain, that would produce the kind of strong reaction that we have to taboo words today.

Those sorts of taboos are losing their force and the F word, I think, would be regarded as still an emphatic colloquialism, but a colloquialism, not a taboo word."