Mx.?
This was the most surprising inclusion for me. My first thought was that it stood for "Minx". Then I looked it up...
The online tentacle of Oxford Dictionaries has earned itself some big up rispek from El Reg by including "beer o'clock" in its latest quarterly update of new terms muscling their way into our beloved lingo. As regular readers know, down here at Vulture Central beer o'clock is always, if it hasn't actually chimed, mere minutes …
The point was that while English is a germanic language and retains a certain germanic character, due to the early involvement of the French and a mingling with the celts - promoting a healthy appetite for new vocabulary - it hasn't resorted to the extreme character lengths of modern high German.
I know that, Graham. You know I know that.
You've been reading me long enough, do I really need to add a TIC icon?
"modern high German" is a nightmare. Don't believe me? Try translating English[0] technical documentation into it. Personally, I refuse ... Makes for more of a headache than trying to translate technical documentation into French, and then getting it past the French grammar Nazis.
[0] Note that "Germanic" is not an actual language, rather it's a collection of kludges, like all modern languages (except French, apparently).
> wordstogetherstuckform
Marvel at that as well, IMO the hypen form is the best: midpoint vs. mid-point vs. mid point. Mkay?
Grumpenland seems to leave wordstogetherstuckform in favor of words together stuck form, not really an improvement.
(btw. a read the above as wordtogetherfuckstorm).
Its not similar to corkage.
Cakage is having cake; there being an amount of cake available in an establishment or the consideration of having cake soon and lots of it!
'There will be cakeage', 'we had cakage', 'bettys tearooms is great for cakage'
Compare with sconage, a specific form of cakage; 'we had total sconage' - we ate lots of (or large) scones
"Cak[e]age . . . . [i]s not similar to corkage.
Cak[e]age is having cake; there being an amount of cake available . . . and lots of it!
I couldn't agree more with Anonymous Coward (AC). I thought the same thing myself when I first saw this new word listed in the OED's blog article. I was sure it would mean exactly what AC said, and stunned to see it instead defined as a serving fee imposed when and where no cake is actually supplied at all!
(Note also that, in regard to "corkage", the word itself only denotes the (modest) service of opening the bottle. The charge for that service is called a "corkage fee". (Duh!) This is not the only nor even the least of the flat-out, unambiguous, elementary errors made/contained in the article/blog entry.)
Cf. signage (an ugly and unnecessary, relatively recent neologism with which I have not yet made my peace — yecch!), babeage, and — speaking of South Park — boobage! (As in the South Park episode "Major Boobage" — a briliant parody of the movie Heavy Metal.)
Is it just me, or are the frequency of these "[insert dictionary publisher here] announces latest buzzwords to go into their latest dictionary" press releases in disguise increasing?
F*** off, we don't give a toss what tedious w*** you're including in your latest edition solely for the sake of getting a few column inches in the press and making yourselves look hip and streetwise like that Urban Dictionary thing your nephew used to add definitions of fictitious sexual acts to back in 2003.
"1337 = 3|_!73, |-|4(|<3|25 (_)53|) 1337 45 |2(_)|3|3!5|-| 3|\\|(|2`/|D7!0|\\| 0|\\| 73|_|\\|37 |304|2|)5"
Although it says below (at the end of the URL that Zmodem included) that "lang=en", it reads more like lan=APL!
(And yes, I do know what the line I quoted actually says — the same thing as the line before it, which I didn't quote — even though I never heard of Leet before today. I'm just saying what it looks like, at first glance.)
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P.S. I agree entirely with Zmodem's point, that if the OED is going to include pwn as a word then it really ought to include 1337 as well.
And it's funny and odd that in its definition of "pwn", the OED mentions gameplay but not hacking.
I was going to make a pedantic little post complaining about Lester's usage and spelling.
(He used usage when use was clearly called for — because his statement was about how frequently and extensively, and for how long, words are used, rather than about how they are used, or whether they are used correctly or incorrectly — and he misspelled it ("useage")!*)
But then I made the mistake of reading the blog article Lester linked to. After I finished throwing up, I knew I had bigger fish to fry.
What an unholy and infantile celebration of vapidity and illiteracy! Celebrating and memorializing usage errors by others while perpetrating several of its own!
But I guess I should no longer expect discrimination or judg(e)ment from a source that mis-defines "cakeage", that doesn't know the difference between "corkage" and a "corkage fee", and that apparently thinks "derogative" is an acceptable alternative to "derogatory"! (Since when?)
("SJW . . . . is used derogatively . . . ." Ex(s)queese me? Derogatorily!)
Today I am crushed. My worldview is shattered.
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* That the OED might accept the spelling Lester used (even though its error-prone Web site does not!) — and not even classify it as variant! (at least according to what I read on line after Googling "useage") — is of no moment at all. The OED ceased to be authoritative in my sight earlier today!
The OED ceased to be authoritative in my sight earlier today!
The OED never claimed to be authoritative. It is, and has always been, a descriptive dictionary. Its authority extends only to attempting to verify the authenticity of sources.
And that's fine. Prescriptive dictionaries are fairy tales for fragile types who shiver in the bracing wind of actual usage.