The Oxford Dictionary of New Words
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; 2 edition (April 1, 1999) | Language: English | ISBN: 0198602359 | 1.2 Mb | 368 pages | PDF


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.