AskOxford: Bubbling Under

English is a language on the move, with many hundreds of new words and phrases coming into existence every year. Although these are picked up by Oxford's worldwide monitoring programme, many of these coinages have only a fleeting lifespan and may never appear in the dictionary. This feature takes a look at some of the most recent and interesting words, phrases, and other language changes which have caught our eye and which could be vying for a place in one of our future dictionaries.

Concise Bubbling

A new revised edition of the best-selling Concise Oxford English Dictionary publishes in July 2008, containing hundreds of new words and phrases that have made their case for inclusion since the previous edition. They come from different areas of activity and from all parts of the English-speaking world; here's a just a taste of some of the new entrants to gain a place in the Concise.

The fast-moving world of technology and the Internet is a constant source of new words. We're all familiar with blogs these days, but now many blogs feature a blogroll - a list of links to other blogs or websites with related content. Internet-users can now participate in parallel universes known as metaverses - computer-generated environments in which they can interact with other users - while some may choose to communicate in leetspeak, an informal language or code used in chatrooms and emails in which numerals or special characters are used to represent standard letters. And Facebook members addicted to social networking will be pleased to discover that a new definition of poke has been added: 'attract the attention of another member... by using the 'poke' facility'. But when we're online we need to beware of pharming - the fraudulent practice of directing Internet users to bogus websites so as to obtain personal information such as passwords or bank account numbers.

Greater awareness of the effect our lifestyles have on the environment has led to a big growth in vocabulary connected with green issues, for example glocalization (the practice of conducting business according to both local and global considerations), green audit (an assessment of a business in terms of its impact on the environment), or wave farm (an area of the sea where machinery is installed to harness the energy produced by waves). Some people are choosing to adopt new environmentally aware ways of life: a freegan seeks to help the environment by rejecting consumerism and reducing waste, especially by retrieving and using discarded food, while a locavore tries to eat only locally grown or produced food.

The world of fashion has given us the term body-con, referring to a style of clothing characterized by very tight garments possibly best avoided by anyone with a muffin top (a roll of fat visible above a pair of low-waisted trousers) unless they have first squeezed themselves into shapewear - underwear intended to control and shape your lumps and bumps. But if that on-trend, size-zero dress is out of the question, we can always boost our egos by shopping at a store that uses vanity sizing - the practice of assigning smaller sizes to clothes than is really the case, to encourage sales.

Finally, my personal favourite. Did you know that there's a word for that catchy tune you that you can't get out of your head? It's called an earworm!

And remember to keep an eye out for any new and/or strange fluctuations in the language, and let us know at askoxford@oup.com.