Nearly three-thousand new words have been included in the latest edition of Collins Official Scrabble Words — the official list for tournament and home Scrabble play around the world — and slang terms like ‘thang’ have made the cut.
Slang
You know, like, whatever: the fiasco of filler words
Whether it’s used instead of um, a pause or just while you grasp around for something witty to say, Christopher Hitchen explores how the grammar battle was lost with uptalk and filler words. And it’s not just teens who are to blame.
#PwnedNudieRun: How Jonathan Holmes got the internet to take its clothes off
Media Watch watchers may have had a giggle when host Jonathan Holmes said “pwned” on Monday night’s show — but they’d have ROFLed uproariously if they knew it was all a Twitter-led dare that would see bloggers forced to go on a nudie run in return.
“Goon Bag” added to the dictionary
Australia continues to make grand contributions to the English language, with news that “goon bag” has finally been added to the Collins English Dictionary. Other new additions include “Twitter”, “OMG” and “beer o’clock”.
“Fair shake of the sauce bottle mate”: Rudd now speaks Ostrayun
Is PM Kevin Rudd’s new emphasis on bush slang the result of focus group testing?
The science of slang
A new book by Michael Adams dissects slang — from Cockney rhyming slang to cheeky sexual euphamisms — and makes a case for the linguistic device as poetry.
