On this page you can read short articles written by lexicographers and dictionary editors about interesting words in English. Some of the articles will cover ‘red’ words whose meaning has changed over time. Others will talk about words that are used differently today.

This page is also the home of occasional articles about any aspect of lexicography and dictionaries. The first of these articles is by Adam Kilgarriff, Senior Research Fellow at the Information Technology Research Institute, University of Brighton:

How To Learn About Fish

State-of-the-art language technology can give lexicography a boost, by going far beyond simple data on collocation and into the dramatically grammatical word of the ‘word sketch’

Read on...

lifestyle

by Gwyneth Fox

In the Macmillan English Dictionary ‘lifestyle’ is a two-star word; that means that its frequency is somewhere between 2500 and 5000 in the language. I was at first surprised by this, but then I realised that it’s a word that has become trendy: 20 years ago it would certainly have been used nothing like as frequently as it is now.

It refers to the kind of life you have, which includes your job, your house, the food you eat, and the things you like doing. But the use of the word often carries an implication that changing your lifestyle will lead to your feeling better, happier, more fulfilled and your ‘wellbeing’ (another trendy word) will be enhanced. And you achieve this by, for example, changing the food you eat and going more often to the gym! So you get headlines in magazines and newspapers such as ‘Transform Your Looks and Your Lifestyle’: this one comes from Boots’ Health and Beauty Magazine, but I’ve seen similar ones in Cosmopolitan, Vanity Fair and so on.

‘Lifestyle’ is used as a noun, as in the example above; but it’s just as often used as a noun modifier in front of another noun – ‘lifestyle changes’ is a very common collocation. In the article I’ve just mentioned, you also get ‘lifestyle goals’ and ‘lifestyle makeover’ – notice how the theme of ‘change’ is ever-present.

There are lots of people prepared to help you change your lifestyle. These include nutritionists, health advisors, personal trainers and – the latest and least-needed in my opinion – ‘happy life skills trainers’. They are people who, according to my Boots’ magazine, ‘develop courses that challenge people’s preconceptions and self-limiting beliefs about happiness’.

I certainly shall not be consulting one.