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From cat cafe to hangry - OxfordDictionaries posts quarterly update
27th August 2015

From cat cafe to hangry - Oxford Dictionaries posts quarterly update

Written by: Admin
Cat café, cakeage and cheffy are amongst the latest new words and phrases to be added to the Oxford Dictionaries online database.

Over 1,000 entries have been added to the online dictionary, including many from the world of food, drink and hospitality.

A string of cat cafés have recently opened in London, Edinburgh and Newcastle, where customers pay to play with cats whilst sipping on a cup of coffee.

Ever felt bad-tempered because you’re hungry? Well, you’re not alone as ‘hangry’ as made its way onto the database too.

New food and drink concepts, including matcha, freekeh and barbacoa have also been included in the quarterly update.

Angus Stevenson, Oxford Dictionaries, said: “New words, senses, and phrases are added to OxfordDictionaries.com when we have gathered enough independent evidence from a wide range of sources to be sure that they have widespread currency in the English language.

“We do much of this research using a range of corpora, including the Oxford English Corpus, our unique language monitoring programme that represents all types of English, from literary novels and specialist journals to everyday newspapers and magazines, and from Hansard to the language of blogs, emails, and social media.

“This quarter’s update shows that contemporary culture continues to have an undeniable and fascinating impact on the language.”

Do you know when beer o’clock and wine o’clock strike? Do you know the difference between cheffy and cidery? Do you know what you’re ordering if you ask for a barmaid’s blush?

Never fear, a list of foody words, phrases and their definitions can be found below:

barbacoa, n.: (in Mexican cooking) beef, lamb, or other meat that has slowly been cooked with seasonings, typically shredded as a filling in tacos, burritos, etc.

barmaid’s blush, n.: An alcoholic drink of various kinds, typically red wine mixed with lemonade or beer mixed with raspberry cordial

beer o’clock, n.: an appropriate time of day for starting to drink beer

cakeage,n.: (informal) a charge made by a restaurant for serving a cake they have not supplied themselves

cat cafe, n.: a café or similar establishment where people pay to interact with cats housed on the premises

cheffy, adj.: Relating to or characteristic of a chef (especially with reference to elaborate recipes, complicated techniques, etc.)

cidery, n.: A place where cider is made commercially

cupcakery, n.: a bakery that specializes in cupcakes

fast-casual, adj.: denoting or relating to a type of high-quality self-service restaurant offering dishes that are prepared to order and more expensive than those available in a typical fast-food restaurant

freekeh, n.: a cereal food made from unripened wheat that has been roasted and crushed into small pieces, used especially in Middle Eastern cookery

hangry, adj.: (informal) bad-tempered or irritable as a result of hunger

matcha, n.: powdered green tea leaves, dissolved in hot water to make tea or used as a flavouring

wine o’clock, n.: an appropriate time of day for starting to drink wine

Oxforddictionaries.com focuses on current English and includes modern meanings of words and associated usage examples, whereas the Oxford English Dictionary is a historical record of all the core words and meanings in English over more than 1,000 years.

Other words added in this update included Grexit, glanceable, pwnage and perhaps most interestingly, manic pixie dream girl…

Full definitions and the quarterly update can be found here http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/press-releases/oxforddictionaries-com-quarterly-update-new-words-added-today-include-hangry-grexit-and-wine-oclock/