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The chambers dictionary1/14/2024 ![]() “As one supporter put it, ‘because’ should be word of the year ‘because useful’,” said Ben Zimmer, chair of the organisation’s new words committee. Last year, “selfie” was named Oxford Dictionaries’ word of the year, with “geek” triumphing for Collins Dictionary, and “because” triumphing for the American Dialect Society. “Its vastly increased prominence in 2014 shows the power of media and sporting events to publicise a word and bring it into wider use.” “We had been tracking ‘photobomb’ for a couple of years but were not sure that it would become widely established,” says Ian Brookes, consultant lexicographer at Collins English Dictionary. “Since then, recorded usage has doubled every year.” “The main spike in the Bank of English occurs in early August 2012 relating to the ‘Queen photobomb’, when an official called Phil Coates intruded into pictures of the Queen at the opening of the London Olympics,” says the publisher. It was then the subject of a Sunday Times article in May 2009, before becoming widely used in 2012 following incidents including Tina Fey photobombing at the Golden Globe awards in January 2012. ![]() “Photobomb” was competing with the resurgence of “ devo max” following the Scottish referendum, and the “ ubiquitous ‘bakeoff’, which is now standard usage for any baking competition”, but following “unprecedented high-profile photobombing” this year, the former won out.Ĭiting Prince William’s photobombing of Chris Hoy at the Commonwealth Games, Benedict Cumberbatch’s of U2 at the Oscars and a Norwegian cruise liner’s of George Clooney’s wedding in Venice, Collins dated the word’s first usage to a Google search in 2008. ![]() There is nothing aggressive or in-your-face about it. It’s subtle, yet devastating a put-down few would want laid at their door.”Īt Collins, the shortlist of contenders was chosen from words submitted by users on, and words that have “returned to prominence this year, capturing the essence of 2014”. Swarbrick says the word was “also special because, in the best Chambers tradition, it came with a hint of understatement. It is beautifully British. Social networking has created a whole new vocabulary, much of which is captured in the new Chambers Dictionary, a miasma of ‘gripe sites’ and ‘click fraud’, ‘cyber bullies’ and ‘fraping’.” “Some words were more celebratory others more exacting. But ‘overshare’ won because it was pointedly relevant to so many of the other words that were considered. “Hipster”, which had to be redefined from its initial definition as “a person who knows and appreciates up-to-date jazz a member of the beat generation, 1950s and early 1960s” to “a member of the generation born in the 1980-90s who look down on their native middle-class culture, and self-consciously adopt a bohemian lifestyle and mode of dress”, was also in the running for word of the year.ĭavid Swarbrick, editorial director at Chambers, says the team “debated for weeks” to come up with its eventual choice, with editors putting the case for different words. There is no easy accessible technical support with FAQs etc.“Overshare” topped a shortlist compiled by the Chambers editorial board, which included “bashtag”, defined as “a hashtag used for critical or abusive comments”, and “digital native” – “a person who has learned to use computers as a child”. The ‘Help document’ under the help menu is off almost no technical help but is great for finding out about quirky words. The dictionary has probelms too - search for a ‘containing word and you get all the words with the first three letters of the word you suggest - ie it does not do what it should. I presume Chambers have simply sold their name and have no interest in the quality of the product. If dark mode is ticked in Mac settings for the menu bar, it sends the app into dark mode - this cannot be changed within the app. The screen looks like a bit of semi-amatuer programming it has a feel of something back in 2005. Most words that begin with the prefix 'un-‘ (like unexpected) take you to the word ‘un’ and then you have to work out the rest - this is just a lazy product. Not so with Chambers, which is frustrating. The Mac thesaurus usually offers more suggestions and each of those suggestions links to a dictionary definition. This is Chambers - it could be so good, but its not.
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