AI slop was the clear winner with honourable mentions including another AI-related word: clanker. But where are the colourful expressions of previous years?
- Honorary Associate Professor in Writing, The University of Queensland
The Apostrophe Protection Society is going along very strongly; perhaps we need a Semicolon Supporting Society?
Surprisingly, Macquarie’s list of the words of 2022 hasn’t highlighted the war in Ukraine or climate change. It embraced Australian political terms, while the people chose the ‘bachelor’s handbag’.
Criticism of the Morrison government’s slow vaccine rollout has taken out the Macquarie Dictionary’s Word of the Year.
It would be ‘aggressively Australian’, holding a mirror up to contemporary society. The creation of the first Macquarie Dictionary, while not without controversies, was a cultural milestone.
From next year, lolly shelves will stock Red Rippers and Cheekies. It’s not a flawless renaming — but it is important.
A new book, which weaves fiction into the origin story of the Oxford English Dictionary, was declared a hit even before its release. Readers will judge whether it lives up to the hype.
Philip Pullman’s call for a boycott against the new 50p coin is just the latest Oxford comma controvery.
The survival of the apostrophe is vital to the comprehensibility of our language. If those who have protected it are hanging up their red pens, it’s time we all do our bit.
There is a negative feel to many of the shortlisted contenders for The Macquarie Dictionary’s Word of the Year.
The book promises to help reclaim language used against women, exploring the origins of gendered slurs. But its use of contemporary slang and lack of an index undermines its credibility.
Organisational twaddle is everywhere. It’s time to climb the ‘strategic staircase’ and incentivise our corporate leaders to abandon it.
‘Milkshake duck’, a word created in 2016 on Twitter, is the Macquarie Dictionary Word of the Year. Efforts to coin new words have a long history and were particularly in vogue in the 1980s.
Do you wince at a mispronounced ‘Moet’? Do you cringe at unintentional portmanteau words, like ‘misunderestimated’ or ‘insinuendo’? You are not alone.
Grammar pedantry recently contributed to the downfall of World Bank chief economist Paul Romer. But ‘grammonds’ are people to be celebrated not vilified.
A badly written law cost a US company US$10 million, when a judge ruled that a comma missing from a statute meant 75 truck drivers were owed four years of unpaid overtime wages.
Scorn has a long and humorous history. But a new book on the subject, featuring quotes from Kanye West, Christopher Hitchens and of course, Donald Trump, rather lacks contemporary wit.
How to avoid eight common grammar errors, such as using “amongst” and “whilst” instead of “among” and “while”.
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