A petition has recently been published on Change.org about the number of nature words in the Oxford Junior Dictionary. We take customer feedback very seriously and have addressed the most commonly raised concerns below. Like you, we feel strongly that nature is essential to children’s lives and are encouraged to see that this is such […]
Read moreI love dictionaries and thesauruses: they’re dazzling and thrilling and useful. I own a ridiculously large number (seven currently on my desk, though most of them are downstairs). I use them, for work and pleasure, all the time. But now Vineeta Gupta, Head of Oxford Children’s Dictionaries, has asked me a question about them that’s […]
Read moreWorking as an OUP lexicographer analysing the corpus of the BBC Radio 2 500 Words competition is a fascinating and enriching experience. You don’t get to read the whole 500 words of any one story, but rather little bite-sized chunks of no more than one or two sentences at a time. These isolated extracts from […]
Read morecareful (adjective) ‘taking care, showing care’ The original sense dates from Old English – ‘full of care’ – and this is the primary sense in Shakespeare. It means ‘anxious, worried’ when Queen Isabel says of York: ‘full of careful business are his looks! (Richard II, II.ii.75), when Wolsey describes Buckingham’s Surveyor as a ‘careful subject’ […]
Read moreadventure (noun) ‘dangerous, risky, or exciting undertaking’ The modern meanings were around in Shakespeare’s time, but lacking the modern dramatic nuance we find when referring to adventure comics, adventure stories, and the like. Most Shakespearian uses have a more general sense of ‘venture, enterprise’ or the outcome of a venture. When Hotspur talks of ‘the […]
Read moredogged (adj.) ‘tenacious, persistent’ The word has rather a nice sound today: anyone who is doing something ‘doggedly’ is surely to be praised for not giving up. But this sense has been around only since the mid-18th century. The original use, from the 14th century, expressed the fiercer canine qualities. Shakespeare uses the word just […]
Read morewant (verb) ‘desire, wish, need, require’ Most of the meanings of want found in Shakespeare are still in use today; but there is an inevitable tendency to read in the primary modern meaning – the positive sense of ‘desire’ – in contexts where it does not work. It is the negative sense, of ‘lack, be […]
Read morepelting (adjective) ‘beating, lashing’ Today, pelting is a term we use chiefly of the weather – and especially in relation to forceful rain and hail. It is a usage that emerged by the beginning of the 18th-century. In Shakespeare’s time the meaning was very different: pelting – probably from a different etymological source – meant […]
Read moredefend (verb) ‘protect, keep safe, support’ The sense of ‘guarding from attack’ goes right back to early medieval times; but it grew up alongside another, more active sense of ‘warding off an attack’, which has not survived today. It was active in Shakespeare’s time, though, especially conveying the notion of divine prohibition. Several characters in […]
Read morecar (noun) ‘motor-car, (US) also ‘train carriage or tram’ The modern vehicular senses date from the 19th-century, so ‘mechanical’ nuances must be carefully avoided whenever we hear the word in Shakespeare. When the word first came into the language, from Latin via French in the 14th century, it had a wide range of usage, referring […]
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