Getting a word in

A while ago, Michael Quinion, writer and creator of the excellent site World Wide Words, contacted Chambers with a query he had received. His correspondent was curious to find out how you would go about getting a word you had coined into a dictionary.

A surprising number of people have contacted us with a similar query. Neologists can be passionate about the words they create and often view their inclusion in a major dictionary as the ultimate goal.

It is certainly not impossible to coin a word and live to see it entered into a dictionary – every word has started somewhere. However, we often repeat the caveat that we, like other dictionary publishers, don't include words until we have evidence that they have been used by a range of people over a reasonable period of time. No matter how cleverly conceived and logically constructed a word may be, it won't appear in a Chambers dictionary until we are satisfied it is in use.

Lexicographers' decisions on such matters are informed by statistics from corpora – large databases of real language use. At Chambers, we have the Chambers Harrap International Corpus (CHIC), a well-balanced and ever-growing corpus of nearly one billion words. With a little analysis, the citations in such a corpus can show how frequently a word is used and if it is restricted to a small group of users.

It follows that if people do find a coinage useful and start to repeat it, the number and spread of citations will increase and the word could eventually merit a place in the dictionary. So, if you are keen to see a word of your own making entered into a dictionary, you should use it as much as possible, encourage others to do so and, if you have the opportunity, use it in a context with a wider audience, for example a letter to a newspaper or a radio phone-in. Keep a record of when and where you have heard the word because, even with corpus evidence available, there is still room for lexicographers to exercise some personal judgement as to whether a word is likely to become firmly embedded in English. When you have enough evidence to prove that the word has established itself outside your own circle, send all your citations to your dictionary publisher of choice.

If your word makes the cut for the next edition of the dictionary, you can feel content in the knowledge that it has become part of the lexicon!

Mary O'Neill

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Anyone for sphairistike?

When Venus and Serena Williams were facing each other across the net at Wimbledon, we can be fairly sure that they didn’t say ‘tenetz!’ every time one of them prepared to serve. Yet it appears that long ago it was customary for the server to shout out this Anglo-French word (equivalent to the modern French imperative tenez), which meant ‘take this!’, and that this is the origin of the word tennis.

In those days, of course, the game in question was not our modern game of lawn tennis, but its rather grander ancestor known variously as real tennis, royal tennis, court tennis or close tennis (the latter term referring to the enclosed court in which it is played). Besides keeping lexicographers on their toes trying to cross-refer all of its different titles, this ancient form of the game is also the source of some pretty obscure terminology such as bricole (the rebound of a ball from the wall), dedans (an open gallery), hazard (the side of the court into which the ball is served), penthouse (a roofed corridor surrounding the court) and tambour (a sloping buttress).

All of these real-tennis terms are explained in The Chambers Dictionary, yet none provides quite as striking an entry as the one for sphairistike. This bizarre word is included as the name under which a certain Walter Wingfield tried to patent the new game of lawn tennis in 1874. Wingfield’s word was pronounced ‘sfee-ris-ti-ki’ and was a shortened form of the Greek phrase sphairistike techne, meaning ‘the skill of playing with a ball’. The dictionary also tells us that the game was ‘quite widely known for a time’ by this name. Indeed, had Wingfield not offered the alternative name of lawn tennis, we might have spent the recent Wimbledon fortnight hearing about ‘sphairistike balls’, ‘sphairistike rackets’ and ‘sphairistike courts’, and Andy Roddick and Roger Federer might now be experiencing a touch of ‘sphairistike elbow’ after their marathon encounter in the men’s final.

Ian Brookes

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A cluster of collective nouns

A few days ago, I received a text message from my brother lamenting a poster he had seen outside a bar, which read ‘Be Part of the Pack for the Lions Tour’. I replied that I might let its creators off as they were referring to rugby, but they should have run with something like ‘Lions Tour 2009: Feel the Pride’.

The bar staff obviously thought they were being clever by punning on the rugby pack (the forwards; you know, the ones who do all the scrummaging and stuff) and a pack of lions. But we all know that the collective noun for lions is a pride – so my pun is far superior. Pack is the collective noun for hounds.

A collective noun is defined as ‘a singular noun referring to a group of people or things’, although people seem most fascinated by those referring to groups of animals, and it’s not surprising given the wonderful images they create. Author Ali Smith was kind enough to write to us with some of her favourite words, one of which was a shrewdness of apes, which instantly makes me think of their strangely human faces and wrinkly foreheads.

Some collective nouns are so common that we barely realise that they’re collective nouns – a swarm of bees, for example. Others are familiar but have lost none of their power: think of that pride of lions, holding their heads high, kings of the jungle, or a gaggle of geese cackling away to themselves. And did you know that geese are only a gaggle when on the ground or in water? In flight, they’re a skein of geese: flying in a loose formation, tied together by the thermals we cannot see.

I particularly enjoy obscure collective nouns: a kindle of kittens, warm and soft but sparky as they learn to use their claws; an ambush of tigers, stalking their prey; a skulk of foxes, scavenging in the twilight; a tribe of goats, nomads on the hills.

The collective nouns for birds are my favourites, conveying a cacophony of colours, sounds and moods. Compare a parliament of owls, serious and studious, to a pandemonium of parrots where all hell breaks loose. A watch of nightingales, sentinels of darkness, give way to an exaltation of larks celebrating the new day. A murmuration of starlings go about their business, talking under their breath, and a rafter of turkeys line the barn. In folklore, birds are often regarded as omens, and sinister connotations can be found in a murder of crows and an unkindness of ravens.

Such is our interest in the collective nouns for animals that we’ve listed them in two of our most recent editions: they can be found in The Chambers Thesaurus and in the Language Lovers’ Miscellany included in Chambers Concise Dictionary. Now my aim is find a suitable collective noun for ‘lexicographers’ – I’ve had a lexicon suggested to me and I’m quite partial to a drudge in homage to Samuel Johnson’s irreverent definition of a lexicographer as ‘a harmless drudge’. Answers on a postcard [or suggestions in the comments section], please…

Naomi Farmer

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Midsummer merriment

The bad news for those of us who live in the Northern hemisphere is that the days are already starting to get shorter. On June 21, the Sun reached its maximum distance from the equator. Ancient observers noticed that at this point the Sun (‘Sol’ in Latin) appeared to come to a standstill (‘status’ in Latin) before reversing its course, and so this extreme point of the year was called the ‘solstitium’, from which we get our word ‘solstice’.

June 21 is also commonly referred to as ‘midsummer’, marking as it does the longest day. The Chambers Dictionary's entry for midsummer records some delightful expressions connected with this time of year. The lunar month containing the summer solstice was traditionally called the ‘midsummer moon’ and was believed to bring on bouts of erratic behaviour known as ‘midsummer madness’. This was also the time when girls are said to have used the leaves of the plant roseroot in various rituals to discover the identity or fidelity of their lovers, as a result of which the plant acquired the charming name of ‘midsummer-men’.

Somewhat surprisingly for a modern reader, the dictionary records the date for Midsummer’s Day as being June 24, three days after the solstice. It appears that in ancient times the solstice occurred on the 24th – the discrepancy with the current date being due to anomalies in the reckoning of the calendar – and the traditional midsummer celebration was fixed on this day. The date also coincided with the feast day of Saint John the Baptist, and so the midsummer festival combined Christian and pagan traditions in the same way as did the midwinter feast of Christmas.

So although June 21 may be the signal for Druids to descend upon Stonehenge, some people would say that it is on Saint John’s Eve – the night of the 23rd – that the real midsummer celebration should take place.

Ian Brookes


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"Quotation marks" & "ampersands"

In a recent Chambers blog, it was noted that bad grammar and poor punctuation often annoy people, yet there are websites devoted to some of the more peculiar interpretations of grammar and punctuation rules. One such site is the pleasantly diverting The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks, which collects examples of this phenomenon (think along the lines of Please "close the door" behind you) caught on camera by contributors.

Chambers Perfect Punctuation advises that quotation marks can be used to set apart words you want to distance yourself from, often to indicate that you are being ironic or sarcastic. However, the use of quotation marks to highlight words or phrases presented without a trace of irony or sarcasm is on the increase. There seems to be a widespread notion that you can use inverted commas for straightforward emphasis, as you might use underlining.

A more recently emergent fashion in writing is the use of an ampersand in place of the word 'and' in running text. Conventional usage dictates that ampersands are acceptable in titles, company names and fixed abbreviations such as A&E, but should not be used in formal running text. Now this elegant little symbol is increasingly used – very often in subtitles that appear in rolling news programmes – as shorthand for 'and' in phrases such as a lethal combination of reckless & excessive risk-taking.

But how annoyed should we be by this more indiscriminate use of the dainty device? Perhaps our level of irritation should be correspondent with the level of confusion that a misuse might engender. A misplaced apostrophe or comma, or wrongly used quotation marks for that matter, could result in ambiguity, but there can be no doubt what '&' means in any context. The character was originally a ligature of E and T (Latin et, meaning 'and') used in printing and, as if any reinforcement of its meaning were needed, the word 'ampersand' has a delightfully circular etymology, coming from 'and per se, and', ie, & by itself means 'and'. So, if an ampersand so determinedly and exclusively means 'and', why worry about the context in which people employ such a handy symbol?

In this spirit of objectivity, we can identify the stages of any linguistic bugbear. Stage 1 is irritation when the development becomes apparent. You might question why this construction/word/punctuation mark is being used in such a clumsy and haphazard fashion when its purpose is to provide clarity in a different situation. However, if you are not the type of person to be riled by something as apparently innocuous as a punctuation mark, you might proceed directly to stage 2, amusement. Incongruous incorrect usages can have an unintended comic effect, something that the quotation marks website capitalizes on. Then there is stage 3: acceptance. The gripe is considered old hat, one raised only occasionally by stuffy pedants, and the 'misuse' (necessary quotation marks?) becomes so commonplace that most people cease to notice or care. You never know, the day could come when no one bemoans the incorrect insertion of an apostrophe in a plural.

Mary O'Neill

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Hoping for a barbecue summer

At the end of April someone at the Met Office forecast that Britain would enjoy a ‘barbecue summer’. The expression conjures up images of ease and enjoyment and was calculated to appeal to a sun-starved nation, grown accustomed to the idea that summers are not as good as they used to be. And it is interesting to note that while English has several phrases to mean a period of fine weather in autumn – Indian summer, Saint Luke’s summer, Saint Martin’s summer – no such expression characterizes a period of prolonged hot weather during summer itself (although older readers might be able to remember a time when the single word ‘summer’ was deemed sufficient to do this job).

Anyone who is prompted by the prospect of a hot summer to issue invitations to a barbecue might pause briefly to wonder about the correct spelling of the word. It turns out that almost anything goes: both ‘barbecue’ and ‘barbeque’ are correct in the eyes of The Chambers Dictionary, while it is also acceptable to write ‘Bar-B-Q’ or even ‘BBQ’. The Australian form ‘barbie’ is also a popular variation, and doesn’t take up too much space on a sign or invitation.

The fact that the word has no single fixed spelling form hints at an exotic origin. Although it entered English via the Spanish barbacoa, its ultimate origin is Caribbean, coming from the Haitian word barbacòa, which refers to a framework of sticks set upon posts – not exactly what many of us will be cooking on this summer.

You might think Haiti’s contribution to the English language would not go much beyond this, but in fact The Chambers Dictionary lists no fewer than eleven words that can be traced to the indigenous language of Haiti. These include such familiar words as tobacco, canoe and potato, as well as the dances mambo and merengue, which might provide you with some ideas for what to do on a hot summer evening after the barbecue has finished.

Ian Brookes

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Lexicography 2.0

The Global Language Monitor recently announced that, according to its calculations, the millionth word in the English language is Web 2.0 (web two point oh), a term popularized several years ago by Tim O'Reilly and friends as a way of describing the maturation of the World Wide Web from its humble text-on-screen beginnings to the interactive, community-driven, multimedia, all-encompassing behemoth that it has now become. This announcement is likely to provoke a lukewarm response from the general public, for whom the term is probably unfamiliar, and amongst web pioneers, who are getting excited about the semantic web (which enables computers to understand the meaning behind web content) and hoping to usher in the era of Web 3.0. And it provides yet another example (along with the language of search engines and mobile phones) of the challenge presented to lexicographers by the rapidly advancing world of technology. The transient nature of such words makes dictionary inclusion a difficult decision. In fact, Web 2.0 didn't make the cut for the recent edition of The Chambers Dictionary.

The term Web 2.0 pays homage to a popular method for naming different versions of software. Traditionally, developers use this numbering scheme to differentiate between minor and significant updates - a version ending in .0 is a completely new version, whereas other numbers represent more subtle improvements. Hence the choice of Web 2.0 rather than Web 1.1 to emphasize that this was a radically new way of thinking about the web. And so the 2.0 suffix joined the family of "e-"s, "i-"s and "-.com"s in creating artefacts of the information age, as it became a somewhat popular way to describe any organization or entity that hopes to re-invent itself with a new, tech savvy identity. Reference has been made to Business 2.0, Government 2.0, Terror 2.0, Church 2.0 and Novel 2.0. But it’s often hard to pin down exactly what these terms mean. How does a book become eligible for the Novel 2.0 label? Could a film adaptation be considered a multimedia novel? Or if interactivity is key, what about "choose your own adventure" style books? At Chambers our concern is with Dictionary 2.0, as online dictionaries, open dictionaries and visual dictionaries provide new opportunities for people to engage with and contribute to the lexicon.

Adopting technical conventions for more conversational purposes is not a new practice. James Harkin's book Cyburbia, published by our friends at Little, Brown, drew my attention to how words like "feedback", "in the loop" and "switched on" were drafted into everyday language from the world of engineering in the middle of the 20th century. More recently, "offline" has been co-opted by businessmen where "taking something offline" means discussing it outside or after a meeting. I'm sure the reader will be able to think of many more examples from other sciences and disciplines, and the list will no doubt expand in years to come as dictionaries try to keep pace.

Even the designation by Global Language Monitor of "Web 2.0" as a word is another cause of lexicographical debate, given that it contains numbers, a space and a full stop. Loosening restrictions on what makes a word is something that we have to deal with 24-7. From the panic of Y2K to the potential of the G20, viewing things in 3-D and listening to MP3s, lexicographers better hope this all doesn't lead to some kind of catch-22 situation.


David Wark

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