Lexicographer at large
Lexicographer at large

Sue Butler AO

 
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correct meanings

It is astonishing how old some ideas are and how they linger on as an undercurrent of contemporary thought.  There are undoubtedly people who still believe the world is flat despite all evidence to the contrary.  In language there are assumptions that, though scorned by linguists, nevertheless survive in popular thinking.

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New words

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flood the zone

This was originally an American sports expression used in football and meaning that a team filled a particular area of the field with players, either to draw the opposition into that zone and leave other areas open, or to defend with numbers.

ZG: 7

With an election coming we are on the alert for Tumpisms in speech and behaviour. This is one that has high frequency at the moment although the caravan may move on.

visual snow syndrome

This is a rare neurological condition which remains a mystery to medical practitioners.  The symptoms are visual disturbance often accompanied by brain fog and tinnitus.

ZG: 3

The sufferers are acutely aware of this name that has been recognised for their condition but it belongs to a niche area of medicine.

green fairy

At the moment a search on green fairy in Australia is more likely to bring up absinthe than cannabis.  The green fairies seem to be an NZ thing.  They are people who grow cannabis for medicinal purposes and supply clients who are frustrated in attempting to access it legally.

ZG: 4

A New Zealandism which will very probably spread to Australia.

Usage matters

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wieldy

It is true that wieldy is a word that sounds very unwieldy but I was surprised to hear an ABC politics reporter using it in the sense of ‘awkward or difficult’.

autochthonous

A friend of mine met this word for the first time in a conversation and instantly fell in love with it. Having played around with what we could do with it, adding autochthonousness, autochthonously, and autochthoneity to the possibilities, and devising sentences of mouth-wrenching difficulty, I settled down to look at it more seriously.

disappearing words

Spare a thought for the words that disappear from use because the thing they represent becomes outmoded — the roneo, the gestetner, the Beta format cassette recorder tape, the curling iron.

Sue at TEDxSydney

"There are those who want the dictionary to censor aspects of language that they deem to be unsavoury or undesirable. But language moves on."

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Sue on the ABC's The Link

"I think with blasphemy you are actually going back to the 1600s where if you took the name of God in vain, that would produce the kind of strong reaction that we have to taboo words today.

Those sorts of taboos are losing their force and the F word, I think, would be regarded as still an emphatic colloquialism, but a colloquialism, not a taboo word."