December 2016 update

Around 500 new words, phrases, and senses have entered the Oxford English Dictionary this quarter, including glam-ma, YouTuber, and upstander.

We have a selection of release notes this December, each of which takes a closer look at some of our additions. The last few years have seen the emergence of the word Brexit, and you can read more about the huge increase in the use of the word, and how we go about defining it, in this article by Craig Leyland, Senior Editor of the OED. Katherine Connor Martin, Head of US Dictionaries, explores the interesting story of how two local words, Bama and shaka, became global. Ellie Stedall, Senior Assistant Editor with the OED, also takes a look at how to make sense of sense.

This December’s update also sees the addition of a number of words from the world of surfing, and David Martin has delved into the language of the sport in this article. You can also explore the chronology and meanings of our new surfing words with our interactive timeline.

Turning to the functional side of our online dictionary, we have added further links from OED quotations to source texts in Oxford Scholarly Editions Online. Find out how to use this new feature here.

See a full list of the new words, subentries, senses, and phrases added in this update.