Kel's previous Ozwords of the day...

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Affordability Perhaps the biggest political issue in Australia over the last 12 months has been the cost of living. Indeed it probably goes back more than 12 months, and all other issues pale insignificance beside it. In fact, other issues that come up in discussion often are just a variation on ‘cost of living.’ What has made ‘net zero’ such a hot issue in the second half of this year is the clear connection between the pursuit of net zero and the cost of living. The issue is looming big in America as well. Although in the United States the big question is what Donald Trump’s manoeuvrings over tariffs and trade deals has done to the cost of groceries in American shops. But in America they don’t use our phrase ‘cost of living’—instead they seem always to talk about affordability. Recently USA Today newspaper ran this report: ‘President Donald Trump blasted Democrats during his ninth Cabinet meeting for complaining about inflation after prices have fallen for products such as gasoline and groceries, part of a broader lament that his administration wasn’t getting the credit it deserved. “The word affordability is a con job by the Democrats,” Trump said Dec. 2. “The word affordability is a Democrat scam.” So, where does this word ‘affordability come from? And should it be part of the political debate here in Australia? The meaning of the word is obvious enough (‘The quality of being affordable; inexpensiveness’ Oxford English Dictionary.) And it’s a 20thcentury word—first recorded in 1910. The big American dictionary, the Merriam-Webster, adds the following as the background story: ‘The adjective affordable, from which affordability was formed, dates to the mid-1600s, while affordability has been in use since the early 1900s. Both words, of course, come from the verb afford, which can be traced all the way back to the Old English verb geforðian, “to send out, promote, carry out.” If the Liberal picks up on this, will ‘affordability’ be a key political word in 2026? Watch this space!

War crime What counts as a ‘war crime’? I ask the question because this has come up in the news several times this year. There were claims, for instance, that Benjamin Netenyahu had committed war crimes during his rescue mission to Gaza to find the 251 Israelis taken hostage by Hamas. And, of course, that taking of hostages was, itself, a war crime. Closer to home some media outlets have claimed the Australian soldiers committed war crimes in Afghanistan. And more recently there have been claims in America that the bombing of boats smuggling narcotics into the United States is a ‘war crime.’ So, what exactly is a ‘war crime’? How is it defined? In response the big American dictionary, the Merriam-Webster, says: ‘We define war crime (usually encountered in plural) as “a crime (such as genocide or maltreatment of prisoners) committed during or in connection with war.” Its first-known use in English dates to the late 1800s.’ And the Oxford English Dictionary confirms this, recording the expression ‘war crime’ from 1871 (but they then add a note that the term has become common after World War II). The Oxford goes on to explain that ‘In 1950 the UN’s International Law Commission recognized the Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal and its judgement as principles of international law. The OED then offers a long and detailed account of what is covered by ‘war crimes’ when it says, ‘According to Article 6 of the charter of the tribunal, war crimes include ‘murder, ill-treatment or deportation to slave labour or for any purpose of civilian population of or in occupied territory, murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war or persons on the seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity.’ All of which leads me to suggest that the expression ‘war crime’ is probably thrown around to freely these days! 

Stupidogenic Our society has become ‘stupidogenic.’ You have the word ‘obesogenic’—used to describe a society (such as America) where the food is full of fat and the servings are always too large, hence it breeds obesity. ‘Stupidogenic’ is the mental equivalent. It is a society that encourages citizens to shut down their brains and stop thinking. This is a society in which too many people have discarded books—and even newspapers and magazines—in favour smart phones; in which people only go to websites or social media sites where everyone agrees with them, so their thinking is never challenged. IQs rose generally throughout the western world during the 20th century. IQs are now starting to fall again. That’s the evidence for our ‘stupidogenic’ society. So far, this new word ‘stupidogenic’ is not found in any of the dictionaries that I consulted (and I checked out all the major dictionaries). It is now even found in the hyper-hip online Urban Dictionary—so we are way ahead of the curve here! It was Richard Godwin writing in the always delightful The Oldie magazine who alerted me to this word family of ‘stupidogenic’ and ‘stupidogensis’. These days, he points out, we let our computers do a lot of the work for us that our brains would have done in days gone by. We used to know how to do proper research (it might even have involved a trip to the library to consult a large selection of reference books. These says we just Google it! And we don’t even use our brains to read maps anymore—we just ask our GPS to do that for us. According to the UK’s National Literary Trust one third of British adults have given up reading books entirely. And The Economist recently reported that the sentences in best-selling books are getting shorter. The real researchers, in this case at the MIT, call what is going on now ‘cognitive offloading.’ 

And, or course, the emergence of AI to take over writing out emails, assignments and reports just makes it all worse. And what sort of democracy can a ‘stupidogenic’ society become? 

What kind of leaders will we elect? I suspect that this new word ‘stupidogenic’ is the most important word I have written about in the past 12 months. Think about it I’m sure you’ll agree.

Pretendian In a column in The Daily Telegraph a short while back Andrew Bolt used the word ‘pretendian.’ I conducted a careful search, and so far cannot locate this word in any of the major dictionaries. However, it does appear in the hyper-hip online Urban Dictionary where ‘pretendian’ is defined as ‘a white American who claims to be at least part Native American.’ And that is how Andrew was using the word. The most famous case in America is probably that of Senator Elizabeth Warren. She claimed to be partly Cherokee, but this claim was rejected by some commentators. So she took a DNA test which showed that, yes, she did have a small amount of Native American DNA going back possibly six, more likely ten, generations—but it was not Cherokee. She later apologised to the Cherokee people. Then there was Archibald Stansfeld Belaney, an Englishman who migrated to Canada, changed his appearance, and claimed to be an Indian man named Grey Owl. He wrote books and went on well-paying lecture tours and was only exposed after his death in 1938. He was definitely a ‘prentedian.’ Then there’s the case of Thomas King—a Canadian writer and broadcaster who claimed to be at least part Cherokee. However, he accepted findings by genealogists in 2025 that he has no Indigenous ancestry. Another ‘pretendian.’ Andrew Bolt also writes about Australian Bruce Pascoe, author of the best-seller Dark Emu who claims to have Aboriginal ancestry. There is a website that has been set up to debunk his claims—darkemuexposed.org on which genealogist have confirmed that his ancestry is 100% British. These are people that are said to be covered by the newish expression ‘pretendian.’ There have been earlier labels for them. At one point they were called ‘race switchers’—people who grew up as white Australians and later announced that they had some Aboriginal blood and, therefore, now identified as Aboriginal. Later this label was changed to ‘box ticker’—because on many official forms no evidence is required of Aboriginality, all you have to do is tick the box the says ‘Indigenous’ and whatever benefits go with that label are yours. And in those cases where ticking such a box has unjustified, and has no supporting evidence, this new word of ‘pretendian’ applies. The Urban Dictionary has traced the origin of ‘pretendian’ back to 2007.

Library My purpose today is to celebrate libraries—one the most wonderful institutions ever invented by Western Civilization. The word ‘library’ is first recorded in English around 1374. The word came into English from a French source word (behind which is a very similar Late Latin word incorporating the Latin word for book ‘liber.’) The Oxford English Dictionary defines a ‘library’ as ‘A place set apart to contain books for reading, study, or reference.’ And it goes on to say that ‘library’ does not include the shops of booksellers or the warehouses of publishers, but rather is confined to those places where scholars (or us ordinary citizens) can go to consult books. I raise all this because there is a great library in Melbourne called the ‘State Library of Victoria’ and it appears to be under threat. The library board is proposing a ‘strategic reorganisation’ that will involve a dramatic cut in staff and services. Writing in The Australian newspaper author and historian Judith Brett says the plan seems to shift the focus away from books and readers and on to tourism. Now, I can understand that the State Library of Victoria is a place that any tourist should visit. My wife and I have done so as tourists—and the massive, soaring central dome is an impressive and beautiful piece of architecture, and a walk around the galleries under this dome is a sheer delight. But that should not be the focus. Libraries are there for scholars to do research in, and for ordinary readers to enjoy—not just for tourists to wander through. So I hope they abandon their current destructive plans. Mind you, I have wandered through some of the world’s great libraries as a tourist, and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. I have taken the guided tour through Oxford’s great Bodleian Library and felt myself to be soaking in the centuries. The Bodleian has a great website (you should Google it) which tells me that: ‘The Bodleian Library is one of the oldest libraries in Europe, and in Britain is second in size only to the British Library. Together, the Bodleian Libraries hold over 13 million printed items. First opened to scholars in 1602, it incorporates an earlier library built by the University in the 15th century to house books donated by Humfrey, Duke of Gloucester.’ And visiting the ‘Duke Humphrey’ library is a highlight of any tour of the Bodleian. I’ve also been to the New York City Library in the Stephen A. Scharzman Building (that’s the one with the sweeping stone steps guarded by stone lions—featured in the movie Ghostbusters). But even our local municipal lending libraries are rich and valuable institutions. Our society would be poorer for their loss. So we must protect and defend them. (I hope the board of the State Library of Victoria is paying attention!)

Abracadabra I was teaching my 7-year-old grandson a magic trick the other day, and told him that the magic word to say when you do the trick is ‘abracadabra.’ It’s certainly the sound that’s been uttered by amateur magicians for many years now—but where does it come from? And what does it mean? Tracking it down through my trusted Oxford English Dictionary I find that no one really knows the answer. They say it comes from ‘post-classical Latin’—but it never had any real meaning, it has only ever (from the very beginning) been used as a magical word. One suggestion is that it was never real Latin—only a bunch of sounds put together by semi-literate conjurers and con-men to fool the peasants into thinking they knew clever Latin words. Back in the days when people believed magic spells could work (and before there was much in the way of medical science to help with illnesses, aches and pains) this word ‘abracadabra’ was used as a spell to make an illness slowly diminish over time. They would write this word on a small piece of parchment which you would then wear in an amulet strung around your neck. And the word ‘abracadabra’ was written in a particular way to suggest something shrinking or diminishing. It was written like this:

ABRACADABRA

ABRACADABR

ABRACADAB

ABRACADA

ABRACAD

ABRACA

ABRAC

ABRA

ABR

AB

A

You can see the idea—whatever the spell was applied to would shrink or diminish just as the word did on the little piece of parchment. (It seems unlikely they ever ran double-blind tests to check its efficacy, or that it was ever approved by the Therapeutic Goods Administration for supply under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme!) Of course, it was always a bunch of twaddle. And Daniel Defoe in his book A Journal of the Plague Year (1665) writes about ‘the hellish charms and trumpery’ hanging around people’s necks—and he specifically mentions ‘abracadabra.’ I think he nailed it!

Octopus and Platypus What the correct plurals of ‘octopus’ and ‘platypus’?  The answer is not obvious—and I think a lot of people get this wrong, so let me try to untangle it. So, let’s start with the origins of the words. ‘Octopus’ is recorded in English from 1759. When the word was put together to name the eight-armed sea creature it was in a something called ‘scientific Latin.’ But this is complicated by the fact that behind the scientific Latin is a linguistic component from ancient Greek. The ‘octo-’ part (meaning ‘eight’) the Oxford explains is ‘Of multiple origins. Partly a borrowing from Latin. Partly a borrowing from Greek.’ So you see it’s not simple. If we treat ‘octopus’ as a Latin word, the plural would be ‘octopi’—and this has been a common plural form over the years. (I’m sure this is the one I heard when I was a schoolboy). But the correctness of this has been challenged. The claim is that the most ancient (and therefore the original) source of ‘octo-’ is in Greek so ‘octopus’ should be turned into a plural using Greek grammar not Latin grammar.  This would make the plural ‘octopodes.’ Which, if we are being punctilious, would have to be pronounced as three syllables, not two. The Greek pronunciation of that Greek form of the plural would be oct-oh-POD-ees (with the ‘o’ in POD as a long ‘o’ sound). And although some pedants will insist on this, it is clearly not comfortable in English (and it's not even clear that it's a plural!). So, what should we do? One possibility is to pluralize ‘octopus’ in the way the English normally pluralizes words—by adding an ‘s’. That would make it ‘octopuses’—and there are some who insist this is correct. But, again, having such a sibilant, hissing end is not comfortable in English. I have a better suggestion. Yes, treat it as an English word (and stop trying to treat it like Latin or Greek—after all we are speaking English, so English rules should apply). But to make it euphonious and comfortable we should treat ‘octopus’ in the same way we treat ‘sheep’—that is, that the singular and plural are identical. We talk about one sheep or three sheep, and the word doesn’t change. (Jeremy Clarkson plays on this by saying ‘three sheeps’ as a joke.) The same thing, I propose, will work for ‘octopus’—if you say ‘I saw three octopus at the aquarium’ I think you are grammatically correct, and it sounds just fine. ‘Platypus’ is a similar story. It came into English (from Greek via Latin) in 1799. The mistaken (Latinised) plural is ‘platypi’ (don’t use that, it just displays your ignorance). If you want a grammatically correct Greek plural, you could say ‘platypodids’—which would sound odd and be unhelpful. Instead, apply my sensible rule and make the plural and singular identical: you can see one platypus or three platypus, and the word doesn’t change. Or is this just too sensible for the pedants to agree to?

Books and children I have talked about what reading books can do for us. Almost as important is (or far more important!) is what books can do for children. There have been multiple studies showing that small children who have books read to them are more ‘school ready’ and do better than children who have been deprived of bookss when they were toddlers. Dorothy Butler once wrote a book called Babies Need Books: How to Share the Joy of Reading with Your Child. Dorothy Butler was a New Zealand children’s author, book seller and reading advocate. Her great book was first published as long ago as 1982, but (as far as I know) it is still in print, and is still a brilliant guide into how to go about reading aloud to your young children. I loved reading to our kids were little, and now that they are grown up and have families of their own, I have had the joy of reading to small children all over again as Grandpa. It is one of the most special times you can spend with a small child. The two of you sit side by side, you have one arm around the little child and a book balanced on your lap or in your free hand, and you read aloud while pointing out things to look for in the pictures. It is one of those special ‘cuddling up’ times that reassure a small child that they are loved, and they are centre of your attention, and that they really matter to you. They are never too young to read to! (See the title of Dorothy Butler’s book.) From the beginning the action of you reading aloud to them from picture books shows them how books work (we turn the pages from left to right, from the front of the book to the back—basic things like that). And children are never to old to read to. Read to them for as long as they will let you. If they will let your read to them when they are 10 or 12 or more—then do it! It is a great bonding time, and it is enriching their imagination and at the same time it is building up their vocabulary—helping them to think about the world, and giving them the words to do so. And toddlers need lots of books, they can never have too many. When you are buying a gift for a small child don’t go straight to the toy department—start with the picture books. There is no child who will not love The Very Hungry Caterpillar or the singing, swinging rhymes of the Hairy Maclary books. I remember hearing a mother in a shopping centre once saying to the small girl beside her, ‘What do you need a book for? You’ve already got one at home.’ Horrible! If you know small children—read to them! As often as you can! Give them books! You will be making a contribution that will live with them throughout the whole of their lives.

Reading the OED Yesterday I wrote about the still newish word ‘bibliomemoir’—and in doing do failed to mention the ‘bibliomemoir’ that I think is the best of all. It’s called Reading the OED by Ammon Shea. The book (first published in 2008) is based on Ammon Shea’s experience of spending a whole year reading through the full Oxford English Dictionary. The FULL Oxford is not the small desk dictionary you are familiar with. The full (the complete) Oxford runs to 20 volumes—each the size of an old-fashioned encyclopedia volume. It contains a grand total of 21,730 pages and weighs 62 kilograms. I have never owned a full, complete, Oxford in my life (it is just too expensive). However, I have the full text available to me online. As subscriber I can consult the whole, massive, multi-volume publication (the entire Oxford English language data base) online. And I can search it electronically, which is very convenient. But that’s not what Ammon Shea did. He bought the big, hardback, printed version and read it from beginning to end. His ‘bibliomemoir’ Reading the OED tells the story of spending an entire year reading through the vast and impressive publication, and the things he found on the way. His book is arranged into 26 alphabetical chapters—in each of which he records some of the strange, obsolete, and just plain weird words that are recorded in the OED. In his introduction Ammon Shea says, ‘As I read I jotted down all the word I found outrageous, funny, or archaic and deserving of resurrection.’ He says that his book Reading the OED contains ‘all the words from the OED that I think people would like to know about, if only they didn’t have to read the whole damn dictionary in order to find them.’ So, he did our reading for us, sitting in his New York apartment¸ not getting enough sun, and just reading—for a whole year. The result (in my view) is a sheer delight. For any Wordie to read Ammon Shea’s charming and well-written book is to take a journey through Logistan—the Land of Words (and, yes, I just made up ‘Logistan’—from the Greek word for ‘word’ and the suffix ‘stan’ which means ‘land of’; ‘Afghanistan’ is the ‘land of the Afghans’ and so on). At any rate the point of all this is to strongly recommend Reading the OED by Ammon Shea as a great read that I think you might enjoy. Check it out in your local library—see if they have it, or can it in for you.

Bibliomemoir There has been a rash of books recently on the importance of reading. Some of these have been labelled ‘bibliomemoirs’—and in other words, they are books in which the author recalls how books and reading have shaped his or her life. By the way, that is still a new word— ‘bibliomemoir’—and is missing from most of the major dictionaries. (You discover these things here first, folks!) But I should note that ahead of the pack on this is the Collins Dictionary, which defines a ‘bibliomemoir’ as ‘a memoir about the books one has read.’ The word is constructed from two elements— ‘biblio-’ used as an initial element means ‘relating to books” (it comes from a Latin word, behind which is the Greek word for ‘book’); while ‘memoir’ comes from a French source word meaning a written account based on memory. (Not a well-constructed word—mixing Latin and French sources like that!) Examples of ‘bibliomemoirs’ are: How to be a Heroine… Or, What I Have Learned from Reading Too Much by Samantha Elllis; The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them by Elif Batuman; The Boy Who Loved Books by John Sutherland; and Look Closer: How to get More out of Reading by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst. The point of many of these books is how taking time to read enriches one’s life. There are repeated studies showing that people who are perfectly capable of reading books, simply don’t. However, decades of research tells us that reading for pleasure really can transform lives. At the same time we need to realise that books are not just self-improvement tools—books are books, and need to be read and treasured as books, rather than for what we might get out of them. It seems to me that it doesn’t matter what books you’re reading: faction or non-fiction, seriously literary works or popular books, or plays or poetry—what matters is that your brain is going and you are feeding your mind. Ian Patterson is the author of Books: A Manifesto, or How to Build a Libraryand he says that reading is almost a subversive activity in a world in which politics has gone crazy (stay sane by reading books!). Sometimes we read for coziness and comfort, sometimes for the opposite—to be confronted with what we do not know. This type of reading is celebrated in Relearning to Read: Adventures in Not-Knowing by Ann Morgan. And I think reading old books can be important. I read the Bible every day. Starting the day by reading even a small portion of the Bible ‘rinses the mind’ and sets the direction of life a bit more precisely. Currently I am reading through two of the letters of the Apostle Paul found in the New Testament—I’m reading through Philippians with my wife, and through Romans with a group of friends. But old or new, books are enriching and our world is falling apart (at least in part) because the loss of reading. What do you think? Am I right?

Rage bait The Oxford English Dictionary has now announced its Word of the Year for 2025— ‘rage bait.’ So, what exactly is ‘rage bait’ and why has it been chosen? 

The lexicographers at the Oxford shortlisted three contenders—'rage bait’, ‘aura farming’, and ‘biohack’. These, they said, ‘reflect our conversations and preoccupations over the past year.’ After three days of voting in which more than 30,000 people had their say, the boffins chose ‘rage bait’ after considering votes, the sentiment of public commentary, and their own analysis of what they call their ‘lexical data.’ ‘Rage bait’ is defined as “online content deliberately designed to elicit anger or outrage by being frustrating, provocative, or offensive, typically posted in order to increase traffic to or engagement with a particular web page or social media content”. We’ve been familiar with the term ‘click bait’ for some time—it means those online postings that are designed to hook you in, to make you click on their website and so increase traffic. Well, it seems the same thing happens with postings designed not to attract you but to stir up the blood. That’s ‘rage bait.’. The Oxford boffins go on to say that rage bait ‘was first used online in a posting on Usenet in 2002 as a way to designate a particular type of driver reaction to being flashed at by another driver requesting to pass them, introducing the idea of deliberate agitation.’ In other words, it began on the road not on the internet. When in fast moving traffic on a major road a car pulls right up to your bumper bar and then starts flashing its lights to make you pull over so they can pass, that action is ‘rage bait’—a temptation to you to turn your face red and have steam coming out of your ears. These days ‘rage bait’ refers to anything that is designed to elicit anger—and especially online postings. The President of Oxford Languages Casper Grathwohl says, ‘The fact that the word “rage bait” exists and has seen such a dramatic surge in usage means we’re increasingly aware of the manipulation tactics we can be drawn into online.’ The lesson is—when you are online, keep calm. Think calm thoughts. That way they can’t get you!

Writing In a recent column in The Weekend Australian demographer Bernard Salt wrote about what he sees as the deterioration in handwriting in Australia these days. He admits that his own handwriting has deteriorated, mainly because he does so little of it. And I am the same—it is so easy to bang things out on my laptop that I almost never need to use my (very rusty) handwriting skills. In fact, on those rare occasions when I need to jot down a note on paper it will only be a few words, and I find myself doing it in printing—in block printing! Mind you, my handwriting was never very neat—unlike my late mother whose handwriting remained neat and small for the whole of her life. Bernard Salt blames this on technology. First, he says, came the fountain pen. These were invented in 1884 and became popular in the early year of the 20th century (not in the 1960s as Bernard mistakenly says). 

Then, he says, came the ballpoint pen. Laszlo Biro, a Hungarian newspaper editor (later a naturalized Argentinian) frustrated by the amount of time that he wasted filling up fountain pens and cleaning up smudged pages, noticed that inks used in newspaper printing dried quickly, leaving the paper dry and smudge-free. He decided to create a pen using the same type of ink. Bíró filed for a British patent on 15 June 1938. It is because of his name that we once called ballpoint pens ‘Biros’ (remember that?) And these became common, and in mass production, after the Second World War. The French Bic company purchased Biro’s licence and began manufacturing disposable ballpoints by the late 1950s. But can we blame our current wave of sloppy-to-non-existent handwriting on such technology? Hasn’t it been caused more by the explosion of small computers—which switched us from pens to keyboards? And does it matter? Umberto Eco, the great Italian semiologist (you may know him from his novel The Name of the Rose) says that good handwriting is good for the soul. 

Eco says, ‘The crisis began with the advent of the ballpoint pen. Early ballpoints were also very messy and if, immediately after writing, you ran your finger over the last few words, a smudge inevitably appeared. And people no longer felt much interest in writing well, since handwriting, when produced with a ballpoint, even a clean one, no longer had soul, style or personality.’ He goes on to say that using a sheet of paper and pen helps you to think, and that children should be sent to ‘handwriting camps’ to learn to write well with pen and paper. 

Then there’s a book calledHow Writing Made Us Human by Walter Stephens. In his book Stephens covers the familiar great landmarks in the growth of writing: the library of Alexandria, the Bible and its translations, the printing press and so on. In fact, he says that the human race should be called Homo Scribens: Man, the writer. So, what do you think about handwriting? Has it deteriorated? And does this matter?

Turkey Has the name of the country known as ‘Turkey’ changed? There is no doubt that in English there is a well-established spelling (and pronunciation). The Oxford records it by saying the ‘Turkey; is ‘the name of a country in south-eastern Europe and Anatolia, formerly used as the name of the lands of the Turkic-speaking peoples or of any nomadic peoples, the lands of the Seljuk Turks specifically, in later use also for the Ottoman Empire.’ This spelling (and pronunciation) has been standard in English since at least the 1400s. But then in in 2022, the Turkish government requested the United Nations and other international organizations to use ‘Türkiye’ officially in English, to which they agreed. And this new name is pronounced tur-KEY-ah. This has actually been the country’s official name since the declaration of the republic on 29 October 1923. But for a hundred years since that moment, we English speakers have gone on using the old spelling and the old pronunciation. So, what do I think about this request from Turkey for those of us who speak and write in English to change what we do? For some organisations (and officials) it has become the diplomatic and polite thing to do. I’ve noticed our Prime Minister Albanese (and some ministers in his government) have taken to saying the name in the new woay. In TV news clips I’ve heard Albo say ‘tur-KEY-ah.’ But I understand the necessity. After all, Turkey has just nicked the right to host the COP-31 summit from under Albo’s nose. And Australia’s part-time Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Chris Bowen, will spend most of the next 12 months working for Turkey (or possible ‘Türkiye’) planning the conference we are not allowed to host. A perfectly sensible and diplomatic use of language. But what about the rest of us? Well, Wikipedia says ‘Turkey has remained the common and conventional name in the English language.’ And they are right. For many years I was a member of SCOSE (the Standing Committee on Spoken English) at the ABC. And our basic rule was ‘If there is a standard and established English pronunciation—use that!’ Which is why the country of Chile is correctly pronounced in English as ‘Chill-EE’ not in the Spanish style as Chill-AY—which the semi-literate and pompous halfwits insist on doing. The issue is communication. The purpose of language is to communicate. If we start using local pronunciations (‘Par-ee instead of Paris, Munchen instead of Munch Firenze instead of Florene and so on) we will simply confuse some of our listeners and fail in our main task of communication. In the case of Turkey’s new official name—the spelling in awkward because it requires an umlaut over the U (Türkiye) and it risks leaving people puzzled about where you mean. Stick to ‘Turkey’—that’s my ruling!

Esar’s Comic Dictionary This the last of the unusual little dictionaries that I shall review for a while (I promise you!) Tomorrow, back to the words. But today this delightful little book called Esar’s Comic Dictionary. It was written by American joke writer Evan Esar. The edition I have in front of me was published in 1960—so this another you may want to go ABE books (or another second-hand bookselling site) to find. (When I checked I found lots of copies from $3:17 to over $20 to choose from.) There have been many comic dictionaries over the years—the most famous is probably The Devil’s Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce. (As an example, Bierce defines a ‘canon’ as ‘a weapon used to adjust national borders.’) So how good are Evan Esar’s comic definitions in this little book? My own view is that they vary in quality—some are too strained to be clever or funny, but others are witty. And I use that word deliberately—because ‘wit’ is something a bit cleverer, or more insightful, that a simple joke. None are hootingly laugh-out-loud funny, but, as I say there is the spice of gentle wit in many of them. I’ll share a few with you, and you can make up your own mind. ‘golf’ is ‘billiards gone to grass’; ‘ignorance’ means ‘when someone finds out you don’t know something’; a ‘tax return’ is defined as ‘imaginative fiction’; ‘middle age’ is ‘ten years older than you are now’; a ‘moustache’ is ‘an eyebrow that slipped’; a ‘politician’ is ‘a person who is sworn into office, and afterwards sworn at loudly’; a ‘pessimist’ ‘someone who looks at a doughnut and sees a hole’; ‘justice’ means ‘when the ruling is in our favour’; a ‘teenager’ is ‘someone who stand half way between and adult and the TV screen’; ‘friends’ are ‘God’s apology for relatives’; ‘indigestion’ is ‘what happens when you’re forced to eat your own words.’ You see what I mean about wit being something a bit more subtle than a mere joke? At any rate, if this is your sort of thing it’s another good read in bed (or in the bath or on the beach) book. And that’s enough of dictionaries for the time being—tomorrow back to words.

Room’s Dictionary of Confusibles Recently I’ve reviewed a couple of small dictionaries, and I thought I might keep going and recommend one of the best little dictionaries on my shelf. It’s called Room’s Dictionary of Confusibles and was written by Adrian Room (an English lexicographer who went on to become the main editor of the great Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable in all its forms). This book was published in 1979, but you can still find on any of the second-hand bookselling sites (such as ABE books—when I checked, they had many copies on sale from $6:81 upwards). What this brilliant little book does is to list pairs of words that many people (most people?) tend to get confused about. Here are some examples: ‘founder/flounder’ (do you know the difference? To ‘flounder’ is to struggle while to ‘founder’ means to sink); ‘obstinate/obdurate’ (making the careful difference between being unyielding and being hardened); ‘blatant/flagrant’ (or can you be blatantly flagrant?); ‘enquire/inquire’ (as Adrian Room wisely says most dictionaries make no distinction between the two—so don’t let the pedants nag about these two); ‘magnificent/munificent’ (I supposed someone might be magnificently munificent?); ‘billion/million’ (important in our inflationary world); ‘mincemeat/minced meat’ (yes, there is a difference); ‘mortuary/morgue’ (two words that are dead similar); ‘nefarious/felonious’ (both of which sound pretty bad); and hundreds more. With these easily confused words we often stumble—sometimes because we don’t want to be thought ill-educated—and so we end up avoiding them rather than being wrong. Not necessary. We can use the right word. Sometimes, as Adrian Room says in his introduction to this book, one word somehow suggests another—and so creates a link in most people’s minds. This is the sort of little dictionary that (in my experience) can be a delight to read in bed (or in the bathtub or on the beach). Or it can be a good ‘dipping’ book—one where you slowly flip the pages and then stop to read anything that catches your attention. So, if you are a dictionary person (like me) this might be one for you.

Aussie Slang Dictionary Today a book that competes directly with the other book on Aussie slang that I reviewed three days ago. But having mentioned one, it seems unfair not to mention the other! The Aussie Slang Dictionary is published by Australian Geographic. The first edition was filled with short definitions of most of the current Aussie slang terms written by Frank Povah who for many years wrote the Dinkum Lingo column for the Australian Geographic magazine. The second edition had all of Frank’s observations on our colourful language, plus a whole slew of longer, chattier explanations of what lies behind out language written by Kel Richards—these came from my Oz Words columns written for the same magazine. It’s a well-designed little hardcover—and is filled with black and white illustrations throughout (mostly from classic old photos showing Australia how it once was). Frank Povah had a great ear for the Australian language and it shows in the words he picks up and records: ‘shellacking’ (comprehensive defeat, whitewash); ‘cowboy’ (not the American version—but in Australia a slapdash, gerry-builder, an incompetent or unqualified tradie); ‘cop it sweet’ (accept one’s fate); ‘pony’ (smallest glass of beer); ‘lair’ (show-off, an ostentatious person); ‘lippie’ (lipstick); ‘dob in’ (tell tales, inform on someone); and hundreds more. While in my ‘Oz Words’ pages I explain the (sometimes complex) history of words such as: ‘didgeridoo’ (is it really an Aboriginal word?); ‘shirt fronting’ (from AFL to Tony Abbot); ‘lucky country’ (Donald Horne’s ironic name that the rest of us took seriously); ‘cask wine’ (and the many different regional nicknames for it); ‘yakka’ (which has meant hard work since 1888); ‘Yarra’ (the only river in the world that flows upside down); and dozens of others. In fact, this little book is packed with so much about the language and character of Australia I think it’s great fun. You can buy this one online from Australian Geographic: The Aussie Slang Dictionary — Australian Geographic

Parasocial The Cambridge Dictionary’s Word of the Year for 2025 is ‘parasocial’, According to the wordies at the Cambridge, ‘parasocial’ means ‘involving or relating to a connection that someone feels between themselves and a famous person they do not know, a character in a book, film, TV series, etc., or an artificial intelligence.’ I’m trying to get at what they’re saying there. It appears that part of what they’re getting at is that feeling that we know people we see on TV or in the movies or hear on radio. We’ve seen and heard them so often we feel we know them. That seems to be part of what they mean by ‘parasocial.’ The word is not a new one—it’s been around since 1956. The Oxford defines parasocial as ‘ a relationship characterized by the one-sided, unreciprocated sense of intimacy felt by a viewer, fan, or follower for a well-known or prominent figure (typically a media celebrity), in which the follower or fan comes to feel (falsely) that they know the celebrity as a friend.’ In other words, ‘parasocial’ is a word that describes stalkers. So far, not a nice word. So why has the Cambridge Dictionary suddenly chosen it in 2025 as their Word of the Year? My guess is that it’s because it now involves artificial intelligence. We’ve all seen those stories in which AI creates a ‘deep fake’ artificial person who offers to have a ‘relationship’ with the poor, lonely person hunched over their laptop. Is that a ‘parasocial’ relationship? Is that why the Cambridge dons have chosen it for this year? They are calling it ‘the language of fandom.’ But I repeat, why now? Perhaps it’s because we are living in a highly isolated age—in which people relate to their devices (their phones or tablet computers) and can no longer connect with real people. Are ‘parasocial relationships’ now replacing real relationships? At least in the lives of some people? And when it comes not to AI deep fakes but real media people all of this is leading to new language. There is now the expression ‘toxic fan’—meaning pretty much what it looks like: ‘a fan of a celebrity who behaves in a way that does not respect or is harmful to that celebrity or others.’ I suppose all of this telling us about the world in which we now live. Very sad. 

AI slop The latest dictionary to announce its Word of the Year for 2025 is our own Macquarie Dictionary. This year their top choice is— ‘AI slop.’ The dictionary says this is colloquial noun meaning ‘low-quality content created by generative AI, often containing errors, and not requested by the user.’ In other words, you ask one of the AI websites to generate something for you, and what comes out is a load of rubbish. That’s ‘AI slop’! The judging committee added this: ‘‘We understand now in 2025 what we mean by slop — AI generated slop, which lacks meaningful content or use. While in recent years we’ve learnt to become search engineers to find meaningful information, we now need to become prompt engineers in order to wade through the AI slop. Slop in this sense will be a robust addition to English for years to come. The question is, are the people ingesting and regurgitating this content soon to be called AI sloppers?’ A good question. And what else was on their short list? Well, among the trendy words they considered, but which missed out on the gong, were: ‘clanker’ (an artificial intelligence-driven robot which completes tasks that are normally performed by a human—popularised by a Star Wars cartoon series); ‘medical misogyny’ (entrenched prejudice against females in the context of medical treatment and knowledge, especially in the area of reproductive health—but does this really happen? In this day and age?); and ‘attention economy’ (an economy in which human attention is treated as a major commodity, especially in advertising—which probably explains those weird ads that are designed to make us sit up and pay attention). The People’s Choice Award (the one we are allowed to vote on) also went to ‘AI slop’ (so clearly this is bothering a lot of people). The Urban Dictionary says: ‘AI slop” means ‘Any form of digital media (videos, images, etc.) made mostly or exclusively with generative artificial intelligence, with inaccurate, misleading, eye-catching, or otherwise silly content made to make a reader/viewer engage with it, usually to get clout (likes/favourites/whatever) and/or make money off of it if possible.’ The earliest citation they have for ‘AI slop’ is from January this year—so this is still a new expression.