Vuvuzela blares into dictionary

The World Cup in South Africa, climate change, the credit crunch and technology have all left their mark on the way we talk, the new edition of the Oxford Dictionary of English reveals, as the latest crop of new words to be added to its pages is published on Thursday.

Football fans will perhaps be unsurprised to learn that the vuvuzela has blared its way into the dictionary’s pages. By being ushered into the dictionary, which is based on how language is really used, the metre-long plastic horn has cemented its immortality as well as its ubiquity.

Climate change, an issue only marginally less controversial than football refereeing, has also made its mark. Even the most ardent sceptics will no longer be able to deny the existence of “carbon capture and storage” — the process of trapping and storing carbon dioxide produced by burning fossil fuels — or “geo-engineering”, better known as the manipulation of environmental processes to counteract the effects of global warming. The new words appear today in the third edition of the single volume dictionary, which was first published in 1998.

Two of the buzzwords of this economically squeezed epoch also figure: toxic debt, used to describe a debt that has a high default risk, and the rather less snappy quantitative easing: the introduction of new money into the national supply by a central bank.

Full report here Hindu

Pandora named most influential Hollywood word

'Pandora' from James Cameron's blockbuster Avatar has been adjudged the number one word from Hollywood that influenced the English language in 2009.

The list released by word analyst group Global Language Monitor saw 'Hurt Locker' from The Hurt Locker, 'Barley Pop' from Crazy Heart, 'Vampire' from Twilight and 'Squeakquel' from Chipmunks closely following 'Pandora'.

Rounding out the top ten were: 'December 21st, 2012' from the film 2012, 'Vichy' from Inglorious Basterds, 'Her' from Star Trek, 'Theirs but to do or die' from The Blind Side, and 'Prawns' from District 9.

Full report here NDTV