Release date 14/06/2001

OED Online - Quarterly Update

THE FULL MONTY

14 June 2001 marked the beginning of the next phase of the revision and updating of the OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY, as over 1250 revised entries are published online (the largest quarterly instalment yet) and 125 new entries appear online for the first time.

Bridget Jones has not only inspired a whole generation of women but has caused a revamping of current English. As part of the revision of the OED giving rise to the forthcoming 3rd edition, lexicographers have acknowledged that influences on the English language come from all areas of the media.

John Simpson, Chief Editor of the OED (no relation to the cartoon family), said 'my job is the perfect excuse for watching action films, soaps, quiz programmes-where the language is busy just now'. The point is well illustrated by some of the brand new words entering the OED in the current revisions e.g. Doh (from the Simpsons), docusoap, full monty, slacker, and Bollywood.

The revised range runs from MEBBE (one of a number of variant spellings of 'maybe' recorded since 1825) to MEMSAHIB (mid nineteenth century usage from the days of the British Raj, though now common in Indian English), and includes full historical treatment of many important English words such as MECHANIC, MEDIA, MEDICINE, MEET, MELT, MEMBER, and MEMORY, as well as hundreds of lesser-known ones such as MECHAMECK (the wild potato vine), MEDIAMNES (islands in the middle of a river), MELCHHEAD (the maturity of age), and MEMORIOUS (having a good memory).

Some of the new words entering the OED for the first time...

Full monty
The Oxford English Dictionary has amassed a huge file of correspondence, queries, and attributions relating to the origin of the term 'full monty', from the large breakfasts allegedly eaten by Field Marshal Montgomery to a version of the Spanish card game monte played with 45 cards. First recorded in north-west regional use, the original sense is now joined by a specific one referring to total nudity, thanks to the popularity of the film of that name. It's perhaps somewhat ironic, therefore, that the most plausible explanation of its origin refers to the purchase of a three-piece suit from one Montague Maurice Burton.

Boy band charts with a new entry
Pop groups such as Take That and Westlife may have defined the concept of a 'boy band' but now the Oxford English Dictionary has defined it as well. In a new entry for the term, published today in the Oxford English Dictionary Online, it is revealed that it actually dates back to the mid-1980s - an age ago in the world of pop music - where it was observed that no one would ever call an all-male group a 'boy band'.

Clubbing on a Sunny Afternoon?
Although the Oxford English Dictionary has previously recorded examples of 'nightclubbing' dating back to the 1930s, new material released in the Oxford English Dictionary Online reveals the first instances of 'clubbers' and 'clubbing'. Both terms were first recorded in the Guardian (the paper now devotes a weekly column to the subject) in an article from 9 July 1966, two days before the World Cup tournament kicked off at Wembley Stadium. Clubbers back then might have danced to 'Sunny Afternoon' by The Kinks which was that week's number one in the UK pop charts (or ‘hit parade’).

Cheesy old pants
'Went to a new bar in Islington, but we just couldn't stay. The music was terrible. The DJ would only play cheesy old pants.'

The DJ was not, of course, intent on placing foul-smelling underwear on his turntable. It would just get tangled up. But the twists and turns of the English language - and especially in colloquial speech - can turn up startling collocations, like the one above.

The Oxford English Dictionary is committed to preserving a permanent, exhaustive, historical record of all types of English, including colloquialisms. It's a job the dictionary has done for over a hundred years, and cheesy pants are nothing special.

'Cheesy', meaning hackneyed and unsubtle (but nevertheless, appealing in a sneaky, wish-it-wasn't kind of way), and usually applied to entertainment, has been with us for over fifty years. Originally an Americanism, it grew from an even earlier sense, recorded by the second edition of the OED, meaning 'inferior, second-rate, or cheap and nasty'; and as the Third Edition's commitment to reflecting recent trends in language - and by extension, culture - gets under way in earnest, the older sense is joined by its offspring within OED Online's electronic pages.

Rubbish or nonsense has been known as 'pants' only since 1994, at least in written sources. The growth of this use of the word in Britain since then, however, has been enormous. It is mentioned in advertising slogans, said on the radio, used in 'EastEnders' and even by politicians. Even if, like the term 'groovy', it eventually fades somewhat from usage, the OED will retain a permanent record of this start-of-the-millennium linguistic peculiarity, while now sharing the result of its linguistic researches with its readers almost instantly.

Six-pack
Get a six-pack the easy way with the OED. Marvel at our well-developed definition and our muscular quotation paragraph. Gaze admiringly at our first quotation from 1992, and track the history of the six-pack ever since. If you can't astound your friends with your six-pack, astound them with ours.

Ladette
15th June 2001 - Read OED definition for 'ladette' today. Thinking I might be turning into one - young woman (vg), 'enjoyment of social drinking' (excellent), 'behaviour regarded as irresponsible or brash' (hmmm, v bad, no wonder I can't find a man), 'enjoyment of sport, or other activities typically considered to be male-oriented' (yes, saved, am no longer ladette).

‘Bad Hair Day’: an expression waiting to happen
Why should we pick on 'bad hair' to characterize the problems that put a real crimp in our day? Why not bad skin, spots, clothes - a bad acne day, a fat-and-frumpy day, a bad breath day? Perhaps partly because to feel good we all need to feel that we look good, and if our hair looks and feels wrong this affects our mood more than almost anything else. Partly also perhaps that the words themselves form a satisfying phrase that lends itself easily to expansion into less literal interpretations.

The expression emerges in the late 1980s, though people talked of hair being 'bad' from the 1960s at least. It has remained common in literal use, as well as quickly emerging and being adopted as one of the most widely used metaphors for times, ranging from moments to years, when everything seems to go wrong, and we feel life itself is against us. We've all experienced the hair that just won't go right, the day, the week, even the life that seems doomed to disaster. And here's the expression to prove it.

New Man or new man?
We now think of a New Man as a man who has put behind him what we see as a traditional male stereotype and rediscovered his 'feminine' side, and indeed we have been using the term in this sense since the early 1980s. But where has this very specific meaning come from?

In the sense in which 'new man' is used in the Christian Church, of anyone spiritually renewed, or one who has been baptized or received into the body of believers, the expression can be traced back to the 14th century, together with the related sense of a person whose life has taken on any new direction or focus (which has been around almost as long).

Then there is what you might call a more literal sense, that of a newcomer, which also dates back to the 14th century; this soon becomes more narrowly defined, earliest as a new recruit or novice, a person new to a particular job or role, then as a person who has recently become famous or rich, or has risen in the social scale, and, by the eighteenth century, also as a person belonging to a generation which has shaken off the standards or ideas of the previous one.

What a wealth of history has led up to our late 20th century word; a history that is still there alongside its most recent offspring, and encapsulated in our newly released dictionary entry.

Sex and drugs and shop ‘n’ roll
Once you have looked up 'retail therapy', you will be able to claim with confidence that you know what you are doing when you indulge in a Saturday-long trawl round your shopping centre. Instead of calling it conspicuous consumption or 'shopaholism' you can rebrand it as a therapeutic experience of a kind invented in the US in 1986, and claim the OED's authority to back you up. If, however, the resulting credit card bill worries your 'significant other', you may still be able to claim that, in comparison with paying an hourly rate to a shrink, you are getting value for money.

Alternatively, you could just 'go malling'; if this largely American term is unfamiliar to you and you didn't see the word in the online update of the OED of 15 June last year, you can just loiter, window-shop, have a coffee, or otherwise socialize in your shopping centre (or mall, hence the above). Whether this low-spend alternative is still retail therapy, we would not like to say.

Lifestyle Drugs
The concept of 'lifestyle drugs', or pharmaceuticals which aim to make people's lives feel happier or more comfortable (though not necessarily alleviating or curing a serious medical condition), is another very recent invention. Though our research has documented the occurrence of this term in 1982 in the United States, the concept did not really catch the public imagination till the late 1990s, particularly with the advent of Viagra for the treatment of male impotence, and the already well-established widespread use of antidepressants such as Prozac.

'Lifestyle drugs' seem to carry connotations of superfluity - perhaps of popping pills to match unrealistically airbrushed images of ourselves created by 'lifestyle' marketing. Through a variety of published sources, we have recorded the following (among others) described as lifestyle drugs: slimming aids, tranquillizers and antidepressants, contraceptives, treatments for incontinence, acne, and hair loss, anti-wrinkle creams, and some painkillers. Some of these have obvious and serious medical uses few would question. But should we be more willing to accept gracefully some degree of discomfort in life, imperfections in our appearance, and the inevitability of various processes associated with ageing? And where are the dividing lines? That is not for the OED to answer, but now that you have been introduced to the concept, perhaps it's a starting point for an interesting debate.

Serial monogamy
Originally used by anthropologists in the 1960s, 'serial monogamy' has passed into popular usage, possibly because of its similarity to the newsworthy serial killer and serial killing. A serial monogamist participates in a series of usually short-lived relationships and may or may not take this so far as to practise serial marriage. Serial monogamy is reported as having been the most common way in which young people in the 1990s organized their relationships. It's probably too early to tell whether it will remain so in the Noughties!

OED Online was launched just over a year ago, and we are pleased to announce that the institutional renewal rate is 98% and also that we have a wide spectrum of subscribers...from UK secondary schools to European scientific research institutes, from international law firms to global media organizations, from national public libraries to museums and galleries, plus a vast range of universities from all 5 continents - from the north of Scandinavia to the tip of South Africa and from the USA to Hong Kong and New Zealand.

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