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Keeping up with word fashion 19

MARK COLVIN: The vuvuzela after the World Cup you may have been hoping never to hear the word again, let alone the noise it makes.

But the brightly coloured plastic horns have achieved their own form of immortality, by being included in the latest edition of the Oxford Dictionary of English. But the 2010 edition of the Oxford Dictionary of English still manages to uggs sale cram 2,112 pages into a single volume.

And with a new edition coming out about every five years, the competition can be fierce to get a word recognised.

(Sound of vuvuzelas)

It seems the dictionary's editors were among the huge global audience taking in this year's soccer World Cup.

BRUCE MOORE: It's interesting how quickly a world catches vuvuzela has found it's way into the dictionary. Twenty years ago the rule would have been well you really had to wait five or so years and be sure that a word was hearing and being heard in many contexts before you put it into the dictionary.

SIMON SANTOW: Bruce Moore is something of a wordsmith himself.

As the director of the Australian National Dictionary uggs clearance Centre at the ANU in Canberra, he has a big say on what new Australian phrases and words make the grade.

BRUCE MOORE: These words that have spread around the world so quickly, that unless you put these words into your dictionary very quickly, and this has come in now within two or three months of the Cup, unless you do that your dictionary does sound macy's ugg boots on sale a little bit passe and not quite up with it.

SIMON SANTOW: He says social media has presented a challenge to dictionary editors keen to pick enduring words and reject the faddish ones.

BRUCE MOORE: It's now almost exactly two years ago and I can ugg uk recall sitting around at a meeting saying "what do you make of these new words people are talking about tweets and twitters and so on do you think this one's a stayer"?

SIMON SANTOW: Words such as microblogging ugg boots uk are in. So is the toxic debt crippling many of the world's economies.

Then there's the more obtuse.

What about the expression quantitative easing? You and I of course both know that it's the introduction of new money into the national supply by a central bank, but do you think it really has that je ne sais quoi that's going to catch on?

BRUCE MOORE: Well yes it's sort of the dull science or whatever it is (laughs). It's interesting if you look at the kinds of clusters of words that come into a new dictionary. If we'd been talking six or seven years ago, I can recall that everyone was talking about words being associated with terrorism and wars, which produced words such as asymmetrical warfare, embedded if you remember.

The last few years of course have shown some changes of emphasis and one would suppose was the ugg boots outlet global financial crisis GFC as many dictionaries will have the word; so that many terms are associated with accounting and areas of that kind have found their way into the dictionary because people are becoming more familiar with them.

SIMON SANTOW: What about the expression staycation? I mean some people might argue that it's just plain awful.

BRUCE MOORE: (laughs) Well it may be awful except if you can't afford your overseas holiday as many people were not able to do and this is a word that I think's been around now for four or five years and once again it was a product of the global financial crisis, this notion that you couldn't afford overseas holidays, so that you would in fact have your holiday within your own country.

Interesting from the point of view of a dictionary maker, what we find interesting about words of this kind is that they are in fact blends, so it's a blend of a stay and of a vacation and so we end up with staycation.

MARK COLVIN: Bruce Moore, the director of the Australian National Dictionary Centre at the ANU speaking to


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