Oxford Dictionaries Blog

And there really needs to be some pronunciation guidance on 'scone(s)' [0-3] [0] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/food-and-drink/news/survey-reveals-correct… [1] https://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2013/03/08/how-do-you-say-scone/ [2] https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/apr/23/how-do-you-pronounce-s… [3] https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/mary-berry-sco…

In this case your correction is better, and would probably be more acceptable to most educated English readers (especially in formal contexts). But the original is still fine, in this informal context. What you're nitpicking is a common and frequently-taught misconception. You can end a sentence with a preposition. Some elitists in the 17th century tried to make English conform to the rules of Latin and those rules have stuck around even though they weren't necessary in the first place, unlike in Latin where a sentence doesn't make sense if you don't follow the rules. This article gives a few examples of when it's more natural to end a sentence with a preposition (and mentions the history): http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2011/11/grammar-myths-prepositions/

http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2011/09/agreement-over-collective-n… > In British English it’s absolutely fine to treat most collective nouns as either singular or plural – you can say my husband’s family is very religious or my husband’s family are very religious. http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001874.html etc. With something like collective nouns it's probably wrong to make blanket statements about correct and incorrect, even if you're a prescriptivist not descriptivist. EDIT: And while I love (but am hopeless with) English usage this is the least interesting bit of the submitted article.

Somewhat related: There are words that are their own antonyms (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-antonym). A better example is nice, which started bad (meaning "foolish" or "silly"), achieved a positive meaning in 18th century and on it's way down again ("How's my coding? It's nice.") Full story and some other interesting examples are here: http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2012/10/change-in-word-meanings/ OK, can't help it, another interesting example. The word slut, of unknown origin, was first applied to men and then generally applied to kitchen maids with a mild negative meaning of slovenliness (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slut, http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=slut). There are other words starting with sl- that made a similar journey but are now fell out of use, e.g. slattern and slammerkin

> ... the sites mentioned above have been keeping up to date, complimented [sic] brilliantly by ... * sigh * ... the desired word is not "complimented", it's "complemented". http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2011/04/compliment-or-complement/

http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2013/08/literally/ > It comes down to that oft-spoke mantra – language changes. Our job is to document that for better or for worse. Except for us, there is no worse. We have to look at language objectively and dispassionately. That's a bit like the difference between a helper taking blood samples and the doctor, not to mention a loved one. Linguists can be lovers of language and philosophers, but they don't have to be, they just measure what's there. Language is made up by billions of people using it, and I consider my rejection of parts of it a curative effort. So I ask, with as much right as any other single human being using language: how does this particular "invention" move language forward? That other people might say it does, without anyone (I could find) giving an argument how it does, doesn't really help. Where, exactly, is "forward", here? Downstream? Even not gaming anymore, I noticed that "kids these days" tend to call low frame rates "lag". I still know what they mean, but I also consider it regression and impoverishment of language and more importantly thought. And while it's a silly example, I find it fascinating in a morbid way how things just get picked up and passed on. I observe similar dynamics with more serious things, like how words like "terrorism" or "war" get used. I think what it all really boils down to is that power in various doesn't (feel the) need to justify itself, and likewise people who say things most…

But since "free reign" has been about since 1834, there's about a 40/60 split between "reign" and "rein", and both make the same sense, I don't think anyone except daft old prescriptivists would care now, do you? https://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2012/03/26/rein-or-reign/

The single most helpful thing I discovered for learning android opengl es graphics programming is that it does have error messages, after all! [abbrev code, use to lookup docs] int error; while((error=GLES20.glGetError())!=GLES20.GL_NO_ERROR) { msg += android.opengl.GLU.gluErrorString(error); } Also, the offical android opengl es 2.0 tutorial is wrong in subtle ways (after the non-subtle wrongnesses were corrected). TIL "advice" can be countable: https://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2014/05/30/advise-advice/ > Advice is mainly used with the first meaning, and in this meaning it is a mass noun (that is, it has no plural). The business/legal meaning, however, is a count noun: it has a plural form, advices.

I'd always hear it was derived from Save Our Ship, but in reality, it's a backronym, and was chosen simply because it was easy and clear to transmit in Morse Code. https://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2014/07/01/sos-mayday/

Searching for it I only find the printing process for the etymology: https://www.etymonline.com/word/stereotype https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2013/05/stereotypical.html https://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2017/10/11/origin-stereotype-clich…

So which is it? Just for future reference http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2015/10/ways-to-say-yes/

This discussion made me realize that Dope and Dopamine did not share roots: https://www.deseretnews.com/article/571007/Similarity-between-dopamine… http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2015/06/dope-etymology-history/ http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=dopamine "1959, from DOPA, the amino acid (from first letter of elements of dioxyphenylalanine), + -amine."

There is a similar reason for why English swear words sound Germanic: http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2015/06/swear-words-etymology-and-t…

They're largely interchangeable in this context:http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2015/05/trolling-trawling-differenc…

Since you are [sic]-ing - it's 'complimented', in this case. http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2011/04/compliment-or-complement/

It isn't exactly "the" British spelling -- it's actually "a" British spelling. That is, the "z" form is not only correct British usage, it's actually quite a bit older [0]. [0] http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2011/03/ize-or-ise/

Oxford has a handy link on liberal versus conservative insults: http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2014/11/political-insults/ (2014) It's rough, but it gives an idea of what both sides are hurling at each other. :) It's doesn't have too much that is as pointedly specific as the SIXHIRB meme. If I had to pick what Americans conservatives tend to use that's kind of equivalent to SIXHIRB, it would be either allusion to country ("real American" type memes / unpatriotic / traitor) or allusions to certain stereotypes (such as "elites" or "hippies"). It's interesting in the Oxford link though that "bigot" and "racist" are hurled from both sides of the fence roughly equally.

Are you sure eight ball is related? OED thinks "baller" comes from the wealth of sports figures: http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2012/06/ballin-for-real/

s/reigns/reins http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2012/03/rein-or-reign/

http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2012/09/does-decimate-mean-destroy-… Decimate may have had an archaic definition like that (even then, the jury's still out), but the modern definition of "destruction of a substantial portion of" has been well accepted even in academia. Unless we want to start using words only in their original, millenia-old definitions can we drop this thing every time someone uses decimation in the "wrong" way?

Coincidentally I was reading this earlier today after coming across a comment on a different article questioning whether pros use the term. http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2015/03/cyborgs-cyberspace-csi-cybe… It seems like cyber is generally used for online badness (cybercrime, cyberwar) while the e- prefix is used for online goodness (e-mail, e-sports, e-commerce)

Sorry to be pedantic, but your very first reference confirms what I said: >However, sometimes the situation isn’t so cut and dried. There’s a set of adjectives (including perfect, infinite, and unique) which fall into both categories, gradable and absolute. (...) >(...) unique has developed a weaker, less precise meaning: ‘very remarkable, special, or unusual’. The historical Oxford English Dictionary first records this sense in the 19th century, and it’s now well established. The ‘very remarkable or special’ meaning is not an absolute concept and is therefore gradable, so it’s grammatically acceptable to use modifying adverbs: √ I saw a guy wearing some really unique eyeglasses. √ They’ve devised a highly unique way to cook and serve meals. http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2012/05/an-extremely-most-unique-op…

Do you know the meaning? Because both definitions are 400 years old and appeared around the same time: http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2012/09/does-decimate-mean-destroy-…

Not "principal", "principle". Not being critical, just pointing out a common mistake. http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2011/08/principle-or-principal/ Principal: Main, most important Principle: A rule, a system of belief

Actually it doesn't matter - either version is correct, and in fact English spelling used organize long before it was adopted by the US. http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2011/03/ize-or-ise/ In fact it appears more to be laziness on the part of the UK english. Whilst the 'ize' form is derived from the greek endings, certain english verbs had to end with 'ise'. As we were too lazy to remember which ended 'ize' or 'ise' we just took the pragmatic approach and used 'ise' version for all of them.

On the subject of OED (and of assembling dictionaries): "A Minor case: OED contributions from a prison cell" http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2013/02/william-minor/

> a number of cases show undercover officers flaunting those rules No, they flouted the rules. http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2012/01/flaunting-the-rules/

> Yes, the double-negative construct exists in other languages. It doesn't exist in English. Are you insisting Shakespeare didn't speak English? > I never was nor never will be. -- Richard III http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2012/02/grammar-myths-3/

I might be oversimplifying it, but the GIF might have something to do with this: http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2012/11/us-word-of-the-year-2012/

> Pedantic, but unlike pregant you can qualify unique. Pedantic, but you can't. Unique is not a gradable adjective. This is not just my opinion : http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2012/05/an-extremely-most-unique-op… http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/grammar-reference/adjectives… https://www.englishclub.com/grammar/adjectives-gradable-non.htm > we wouldn't have expressions like "totally unique" or the "most unique" I wouldn't normally bring this up, but while we're being pedantic, there are lots of reasonably common expressions that exhibit gratingly poor grammar or sematics. You have quoted two of them above. > unique means the quality of differing from other things, and this is a continium. Ah no. Unique means "one of a kind", not merely "differing". "uni" as a prefix means one, e.g unicycle, universe, unitard. "one of a kind"-ness is not continuous! As per the second link, "unique" already contains the idea of "very different".