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Next to reading Jane Austen's novels, we love watching adaptations of them - but how historically accurate has the dialogue been over the past few years?

Love and language in Jane Austen adaptions

Jane Austen achieved some success as an author during her own lifetime. Her first published novel, Sense and Sensibility (1811), was reviewed well and sold out of copies after about a year. Her second, Pride and Prejudice also sold well as did Mansfield Park, followed by Emma. She completed six novels in all, but the […]

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The West Wing once claimed that there were only three English words beginning with 'dw'. We disagree!

Quiz: words beginning with ‘dw’

“There are three words in the English language, and three words only, that begin with the letters ‘dw’,” claims President Bartlet in The West Wing. The three that the show proceeds to list – dwindle, dwarf, and dwell – are certainly the most common. Each of these has related forms (e.g. dwarfling), but there are […]

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From Madge to the Modfather, the Chairman of the Board to the Lizard King, there’s something to the titles we give musicians.

Musical monikers: what’s in a name?

Forgive me, Bey. For I have sinned. Last Thursday, I called Britney Spears ‘The Queen’ in an over-punctuated, but seemingly innocuous, tweet. ‘So excited for #Glory. Brit is da QUEEN!!!!!’ Oh, you sweet, simple fool. My Twitter erupted in flames. Under fire from Little Monsters, Swifties, Lovatics, and Selenators. Beyonce fans, however, (the Bey Hive), […]

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The English language has many expressions relating to animals.

10 British animal idioms and expressions

Think you’re the cat’s whiskers – or even the dog’s bollocks – when it comes to knowing your animal idioms in British English? You’re probably right – so the next time you’re listening to your friend rabbiting on, why not try dropping one of the following common British expressions into your conversation? You’ll soon sound […]

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Shakespeare often refers to theatres, acting, and performance in his plays.

Quiz: Shakespeare and the theatre

You’ll hopefully have seen at least one play by Shakespeare in a theatre, at some point in your life – but did you know how often Shakespeare refers to theatres, acting, and performance in his plays? It adds a layer of amusement to a scene, acknowledging that the audience is seeing a play being performed, without […]

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Katherine Martin is back at Nine Worlds this year, and she's returned with some interesting new word suggestions.

Geek dictionary corner at Nine Worlds 2016

Nine Worlds is an inclusive multi-genre convention for ‘books, films, TV shows, gaming, comics, cosplay, crafts, sciences, fanfic, and the culture and creativity that underlie them all’. This was the third summer that I have skipped along to join in: here are my dispatches from 2014 and 2015. Besides running an academic panel on foreign […]

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Words invented for existing concepts to distinguish them from something new are known as retronyms.

What are retronyms, and why do they exist?

One way that language changes is the coinage of terms to describe new versions of existing concepts or inventions, for example the compound electric guitar to differentiate the new invention from the existing type of guitar. However, with electric guitars becoming increasingly widespread, the word guitar no longer unambiguously described one that could be played […]

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The Brexit referendum in the UK has spawned a number of new portmanteaus.

From TEOTWAWKI to hoyay: words on the radar

Which words are our lexicographers looking carefully at right now? Well, all and any of them, of course – but there are some interesting words which are hovering on the peripheries of dictionary inclusion that we wanted to draw your attention to. Words aren’t included in Oxford Dictionaries until enough evidence of their sustained use […]

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