Lexicographer at large
Lexicographer at large

Sue Butler AO

 
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LATEST BLOG

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Being difficult

This is such a simple little phrase and yet I have found it hard to pin down the meaning.  It mostly turns up as You are just being difficult or Stop being so difficult and is often used with children.

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New words

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Run Nation

Run Nation has picked up an element of Rugby League to feature it as a sport in its own right. 

ZG: 4

This unlikely sport has been gathering a bit of a following.

skimo

Each new Olympics brings a new sport to our attention.  This time it is skimo, the name being an abbreviation of ski mountaineering. 

ZG: 3

Not even the Olympics was enough to give this sport much attention.

wet leaf syndrome

This is a translation of the Japanese nureochiba, literally, ‘wet fallen leaf’, a term used by Japanese women to denigrate their retired husbands who, suddenly stuck at home with no occupation and no friends, seem to be like a wet leaf stuck to the wife’s shoe.

ZG: 3

An interesting and vivid expression English has borrowed.

Not a common term but a bit of vivid imagery.

Usage matters

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AI as a verb

Remember when Google was new and we all finally made the leap from noun to verb and started saying that we would google something. 

presence and prevalence

I heard a news report on the increase of the prevalence of the police in the CBD — and wondered.  I think that, while you can increase the presence of the police force in the CBD, you can’t increase its prevalence.

mental health

So frequently are we discussing mental health problems and mental health conditions that the phrase mental health is acquiring severely negative connotations. 

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."

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