Teaching & Learning

Every year, Oxford Dictionaries are updated with some of the following: new words and senses, special features on language change, revised encyclopedic entries and improved functionality. Here are the main additions in 2012 and the corresponding month!
November November’s update sees words from the worlds of technology, social culture, and finance debuting on Oxford Dictionaries Online. Social terms recognized include bezzie, boyf, deets, First World problem, and stressy whilst technology brings us chatbot, forumite, Godwin’s law, and the recently launched LTE and 4G mobile networks. The continuing impact of the financial world can be seen in the addition of debt trap, payday loan, and payday lender.
August The August quarterly update includes the addition of a number of terms inspired by contemporary culture, including ridic, group hug,

To all our Readers, Friends and Visitors, our sincere and warm wishes of a very Merry Christmas!

We are shutting down for some days, to take a break and enjoy some quality family time over Christmas. Meanwhile, we do hope your holiday season is full of light, happiness and love! See you in some days!

There is a widespread and unnecessary fear of doomsday on December 21st, 2012. Some people worry about a Maya prophecy of the end of the world, others fear a variety of astronomical threats such as collision with a rogue planet. Polls suggest that one in ten people worry about whether they will survive past Dec 21st of this year. Following are brief facts that address these doomsday fears. Mayan Calendar: The Maya calendar, which is made up different cycles of day counts, does not end this year. Rather, one cycle of 144,000 days (394 years) ends and the next cycle begins. Mayan Prophecy: The ancient Maya did not predict the end of the world or any disaster in December 2012. Such doomsday predictions are a modern hoax. Planet Nibiru: Nibiru is probably the minor name of a god found in ancient Mesopotamian writing. There is no planet named Nibiru, and the fictional books by economist Zecharia Sitchin about a civilization on this planet are a hoax. Rogue Planet Headed for Earth. For the past…

"Those Christmas lights
Light up the street
Down where the sea and the city meet
May all your troubles soon be gone
Oh Christmas lights keep shining on"

Christmas carols today carry cozy connotations of ancient traditions as old as King Wenceslas, but Christmas caroling as we know it dates back to the 19th Century and not much further. In fact, caroling itself didn't always involve Christmas, and the ancient tradition of traveling from house to house to wish neighbors good cheer didn't always involve singing. There's a distinction to be made between carols — songs stemming from medieval musical traditions — and today's Christmas caroling, says Daniel Abraham, musicology expert and choral director at American University in Washington, D.C. "The concept of carol in its origins has actually nothing to do with Christmas," Abraham says. Medieval carols were liturgical songs reserved for processionals in the 12th and 13th centuries. And though modern carols sometimes take their form from these original carols — starting with a refrain, followed by verses of uniform structure — they're separate entities. The act …