Latest news with #OxfordEnglishDictionary
News18
a day ago
- Entertainment
- News18
National Selfie Day 2025: Origins, Fun Facts, How To Celebrate And Tips For Taking The Perfect Selfie
Last Updated: National Selfie Day 2025: National Selfie Day, celebrated every year on June 21, is all about capturing your best self. National Selfie Day 2025: Are you someone who's always ready with your phone to snap a selfie? No matter where you are or what you're wearing, all you need is a quick hair check, the right angle, and your signature pose. Well, here's something exciting—you actually get a whole day to celebrate yourself and your love for selfies. National Selfie Day, celebrated every year on June 21 and coinciding with International Yoga Day, is all about capturing your best self. But how did this day come to be? Let's dive into its origins, discover some fun facts, and explore creative ways to celebrate it. Plus, we've got some secret tips to help you nail that perfect selfie angle. National Selfie Day 2025: Origins The film camera was invented in 1885 and since then humans have always been fascinated by capturing their own image. When digital photography became popular in the 1990s and early 2000s, it made taking self-portraits easier and affordable than using film cameras. Then, around 2005, camera phones, digital cameras, and social media all came together and that's when the 'selfie" became more than just a new word. It turned into a global craze. The credit for the first selfie goes to Robert Cornelius, an American chemist and early photography pioneer. In 1839, he used the daguerreotype method to capture the first intentional self-portrait, which took around 10–15 minutes to develop. The selfie has evolved as quickly as photography itself, with many artists shaping and redefining self-portraiture over the past 181 years. From lesser-known yet highly talented figures like Vivian Maier to pop culture faces like Andy Warhol, tracing the roots of today's selfie takes us on a fascinating journey through history. However, it wasn't until the early 2000s that photography and therefore selfies, became widely accessible to the public with the arrival of the first camera phones. Following the rising trend in 2014, the BBC officially declared June 21 as National Selfie Day. Soon after, the Oxford English Dictionary added the word 'selfie' to its list of entries. National Selfie Day 2025: Fun Facts Superstitions about selfies: Yes, in some cultures, people believe selfies can capture more than just your image—possibly even a piece of your soul. This belief existed long before photography but still lingers today. How do astronauts take selfies in space?: Astronauts get creative by using reflective visors on their helmets or extending cameras to capture themselves with Earth or space as the backdrop. These photos spark wonder and bring people closer to space exploration. Selfie got an award: You will be surprised to know that 'Selfie" was 2013's word of the year. How to Celebrate National Selfie Day 2025 National Selfie Day 2025: Tips for Taking the Perfect Selfie Find the Right Light: Use natural light or face a light source to avoid harsh shadows and brighten your selfie. Use a Selfie Stick: Capture wider frames and better group shots with the help of a selfie stick. Strike a Pose: Go beyond a smile—use props or action shots to show your personality. Embrace Filters Wisely: Use subtle filters to enhance your selfie without over-editing. Capture Candid Moments: Natural, unposed selfies often tell the most genuine stories. Experiment with Angles: Try different angles and poses to find your most flattering look. So, it's time to switch on your front camera and snap a fantastic selfie that captures your best self. About the Author Lifestyle Desk Our life needs a bit of style to get the perfect zing in the daily routine. News18 Lifestyle is one-stop destination for everything you need to know about the world of fashion, food, health, travel, More The News18 Lifestyle section brings you the latest on health, fashion, travel, food, and culture — with wellness tips, celebrity style, travel inspiration, and recipes. Also Download the News18 App to stay updated! First Published:
The Hindu
4 days ago
- Health
- The Hindu
The Stethoscope and the Pen
Published : Jun 18, 2025 17:39 IST - 6 MINS READ Dear reader, This begins, as most things do in medicine, with a case history. In the late 19th century, one of the most prolific contributors to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) was not a lexicographer or a linguist, but a doctor: Dr William Chester Minor. He was a retired US Army surgeon. He lived in an asylum for the criminally insane after committing a murder in a fit of paranoid delusion. There, amid hallucinations and despair, he sent thousands of entries to the OED's editor, James Murray. The Surgeon of Crowthorne: A Tale of Murder, Madness and the Love of Words by British writer Simon Winchester tells the story in vivid detail. It is ironic that the English language—especially its modern variant in which you're reading this newsletter—bears the imprint of a doctor who had both healed and harmed. No wonder, then, that so many doctors handle language with surgical precision. And they have produced quite an impressive line-up of literary works that continue to amaze us. Physician-writers have long been among our most haunting chroniclers. Greek physician Hippocrates, known more for his oath than his prose, left behind case notes that can be read like proto-stories: terse, elliptical, full of mystery. During the Islamic Golden Age, Avicenna (Ibn Sina) wrote The Canon of Medicine, but also philosophical treatises that were poetic. Conversely, one of his most popular works has such a curiously Instagram-ish title—The Book of Healing—that reels will be made on it if Gen Z discovers it. In 11th-century Italy, Trotula of Salerno, a female physician, wrote pioneering texts on women's medicine, interspersed with interesting takes that today read as proto-feminist. Jump forward to the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and we find a string of European doctor-writers—Chekhov in Russia, deeply attuned to the moral fevers of society; Axel Munthe in Sweden, whose The Story of San Michele mingled ghost story, travelogue, and psychological insight with wry, clinical detachment. 'A man can stand a lot as long as he can stand himself,' Munthe wrote. Doctors, it is said, are like priests. They see men at their worst and at their best, when all pretence is gone. I'd like to believe it is this access to raw, unadorned human experience, life's thresholds and endings, that gives doctors a peculiar vantage point. They witness what most of us only guess at. And when some of them choose to write, their words often possess the kind of authority that only suffering—and the attempt to ease it—can confer. In our times, a bunch of authors embody the archetype elegantly. I'll start with Siddhartha Mukherjee, whose Pulitzer-winning The Emperor of All Maladies made the grim history of cancer into something luminous, almost operatic. Mukherjee, a cell biologist, moves effortlessly from the granular language of genes to the grand arcs of history and myth. His more recent book, The Gene: An Intimate History, is as much about heredity as it is about inheritance, body, trauma, memory, and beyond. Atul Gawande takes a different tack. His writing, especially in Being Mortal, studies not just death, but the systems that fail us as we age. A surgeon with scalpel-sharp prose, Gawande's gift is for laying bare the limits of modern medicine. He focusses on the need to focus on our well-being rather than on our survival. Then there's Abraham Verghese, part physician, part novelist. His writing, be it the sprawling novel Cutting for Stone (2009) or the latest, The Covenant of Water, pulses with a love for language and for the strange, sustaining rituals of medicine. The Kodagu-based Kavery Nambisan is a surgeon whose books, The Hills of Angheri and The Story that Must Not Be Told, eschew romanticism. She writes of rural India, of ethical decay, of dignity in dying. Her writing is political in the best way: not polemical, but attentive to class, caste, and the compromises made by the poor and the principled. One of the most beautiful contributions to this genre is Vikram Paralkar's underrated work The Afflictions, a surreal, Borgesian catalogue of imaginary diseases that reads like a cross between a clinical manual and a dream journal. It reminds us of how thin the line is sometimes between medicine and myth. What is it that we're really reading when we read a doctor's prose? We are reading, perhaps, someone who has seen too much. Someone whose vocabulary must stretch to accommodate grief, whose syntax has absorbed the rhythms of suffering. A line of poetry that comes to mind is from Emily Dickinson—not a doctor, but certainly acquainted with illness: 'After great pain, a formal feeling comes – The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs –' I think this is what many physician-writers bring to the table: a language for that 'formal feeling', a lexicon for loss that neither wallows nor looks away. It was only recently—when an intern at Frontline mentioned it to me—that I heard the term 'medical humanities'. For those who haven't heard of it either, medical humanities is what happens when you admit that the body is more than a machine, and healing more than a technical fix. It's a restless, interdisciplinary field that brings together philosophy, literature, ethics, history, art, religion—even theatre and film—with medicine, not to romanticise illness, but to understand it in its full, human context. It asks what pain means, not just how to measure it. It explores the murky, often invisible dimensions of caregiving, suffering, and survival that clinical charts can't capture. In a world where science often speaks in numbers, medical humanities insists on stories. In more than one way, all writing by doctors are solid contributions to this new-found literary spinoff. Medical schools in the US and the UK are now incorporating literature and narrative ethics into their curricula. India, still catching up, might do well to listen. Because illness is never just cellular—it's social, cultural, linguistic. A cancer diagnosis lands differently in a Mumbai slum than in a penthouse in New Delhi. A doctor who can understand that difference—not just treat it, but write it—can rehumanise a field that often feels like it's grinding through bodies at industrial scale. Which brings me, inevitably, to Paul Kalanithi. His When Breath Becomes Air is that rarest of things: a book that breaks you quietly, then leaves you grateful for the shattering. Diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer at the cusp of his career as a neurosurgeon, Kalanithi began writing about his illness with eerie clarity and grace. I once reviewed the book—and carried the weight of it for weeks. 'Even if I'm dying,' he wrote, 'until I actually die, I am still living.' It is one of life's odd and lovely ironies that so many of our most healing stories come not from novelists or poets, but from doctors. As the dictionary-building Dr Minor proved, even in madness and despair, a doctor can give language new life. Which is precisely why Frontline is thrilled to introduce a new column by the brilliant doctor-duo 'Kalpish Ratna' (Kalpana Swaminathan and Ishrat Syed), titled 'Hello, Fingertip' where the surgeons will be looking at how humans can reconnect with their 'sentient selves'. Read it here (it's free!) and let us know your thoughts. Also, write back with your favourite doctor-writers, in any language. Wishing you a healthy week ahead, Jinoy Jose P. Digital Editor, Frontline We hope you've been enjoying our newsletters featuring a selection of articles that we believe will be of interest to a cross-section of our readers. Tell us if you like what you read. And also, what you don't like! Mail us at frontline@
Boston Globe
10-06-2025
- General
- Boston Globe
A man of letters on the power of words
Get The Gavel A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr. Enter Email Sign Up When I was a boy playing some word game with my family, any altercations would be answered with a cry of 'Look it up in the dictionary!' There were two parts to this looking-up: the first related to the word's status, indeed existence. If a word wasn't in the dictionary, then it didn't, in any real sense, exist. 'Not in the dictionary!' was a triumphant result for an opponent. The second part was to do with meaning: A word meant what the dictionary said it meant, nothing more, nothing less. Advertisement Adolescence, and the awareness of sex, made me realize that there were more words in heaven and earth than were dreamt of in the dictionary. I remember in idle moments looking up words and phrases I suspected had something to do with sex, also the new words and phrases boys used with a sense of thrilled discovery. That they 'weren't in the dictionary' and couldn't be employed in front of my parents made them, of course, all the more thrilling to use in private. Advertisement But I still believed in the overall authority of the dictionary, and while not much given to philosophical reflection, I assumed two things about words, their life, and their history. The first was that words matched the world: that every word stood for a real something out there, and conversely, that everything out there in the world had its appropriate name, and that name, that word, was to be found in the dictionary. And the second thing I quasi-assumed was that at the moment when a thing was named — whether by Adam in the Garden of Eden or by some lexically advanced caveman — the word meant nothing other than the thing denoted by it. In other words, there was a golden age, a peaceable kingdom in which all the words lay down happily with one another, meaning no more and no less than they did, and each blissfully attached to its own single thing, idea, item, notion. Put like this, it sounds a bit absurd — deliberately so. But it is, I think, the belief most of us start off having about words, and some continue on with: The notion that words have some fixed, original, authentic meaning, and that the only way to go thereafter is down. This lexical golden-ageism often joins hands with grammatical prescriptivism — never end a sentence with a preposition, never split an infinitive, and so on — to create many mournful and irritated letters to the newspapers about the decline of language and, with it, civilization. Once you can't trust a word to mean what it 'always has,' then the world starts to go to hell in a handbasket, as my mother used to say. Though that's an odd word for a start — 'handbasket.' And how might the world go to hell in one? Advertisement I began to realize that there was something wrong with such linguistic absolutism when I got my first job after university, as an editorial assistant on a new supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary. I spent three years researching the history of certain words and phrases between B and G, trying to find their earliest printed use, writing etymologies, pronunciations, and definitions. It was very particular, microscopic work — I remember spending days reading through books on cricket, trying to find the earliest printed use of the word 'gully' — but those three years changed most of my previous assumptions about words and dictionaries. If I went in as an unthinking conservative prescriptivist, I came out a liberal descriptivist. I no longer believed in some golden age of language, some platonic matching of word and thing. Nor did I accept the myth of linguistic decline — that once upon a time language was employed by people who always knew their wrist from their elbow, until the barbarians came through the gates bringing misuse, inaccuracy, vulgarization. I came to believe instead that language was — and is — often approximate, that words mean only what we generally agree that they mean, and that the English language has always been in a state of tumultuous motion, and all the better for it. Advertisement Let me give an example. When the Welsh Labour politician Ray Gunter resigned from Parliament in 1972, he made an emotional speech in which he said he was going back to the valleys 'from whence I have come.' There was a certain amount of mockery — posh mockery — of Gunter for this remark. Ho ho, he doesn't know that 'whence' means 'from where,' so 'from whence' is like saying 'from from where,' good riddance to this linguistic oaf. But — look it up in the dictionary — 'from whence' is well attested in both Shakespeare and the Bible. (Gunter was doubtless referencing Psalm 121: 'I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.') Grammarians who try to impose grammar on a moving language, to force it backward into some false original purity of structure, are always on to a loser. Still, at least — and this is not something I say very often — at least we are not French. For centuries the French had — and still have — the Académie Française sitting in judgment on what is truly and authentically a French word and finding 'proper' alternatives for unacceptable neologisms and imports, like 'le weekend.' The English language is — has always been — a mongrel beast. That is partly where its vigor, energy, and suppleness come from. Its porosity to the languages and dialects of other English-speaking countries acts as a regular blood transfusion. Any writer born into the English language is very lucky: not just for all the many potential readers out there, but for the very words he or she is given to play — to play seriously — with. Advertisement Of course, being a liberal relativist about words doesn't mean that I think anyone can use the language — written or spoken — as well as anyone else. The war against cliché is ongoing — even if, as I write it, that phrase, 'the war against cliché,' sounds, well, a bit of a cliché. Obviously, some writers are better than others — in clarity, style, expressiveness, effect. Obviously, a writer shouldn't needlessly confuse a reader, only needfully — for a specific and well-understood purpose. Obviously, the bad linguistic guys are still out there — seeking our vote, trying to sell us a product, lying to us about what happened, by bad or misleading use of language. And yet I believe that in the end good language drives out bad, and that the obfuscators will be defeated, partly by the very strength of language itself. At the same time, just as I celebrate the endless malleability of the language I use to write in, there are changes I don't like. Within the tolerant former lexicographer lies the grumpy older citizen. To enumerate a few of my particular beefs: I hate the way 'storied' is beginning to replace 'historic' and 'paraphrase' is used instead of 'adapt'; or 'fulsome' (which 'means' 'falsely over the top') is used to mean 'very full.' 'Beg the question' has long been a losing cause; it 'means' 'avoid the question by prejudging the answer' but — perhaps because 'beg' has some possible ambiguity to it — has come to mean 'ask the question.' I want British English to remain distinct from American English. I dislike the creeping use of 'out the door/window' (American) rather than 'out of the door/window.' Similarly, in sports commentary, American terms like 'an assist' or 'step up to the plate' are often now used, to no wiser purpose that I can see. And when someone a generation or two below me says 'I like that you're here' instead of 'I'm glad that you're here' or 'I like the fact that you're here,' I tend to bridle. The construction — from German via American English — sounds wrong and harsh to my ear. And I have a visceral dislike of what has happened to the lovely word 'uxorious.' It used to describe a man who doted irredeemably on his wife; now it is applied to a man who has simply had a number of wives. I wouldn't call that uxoriousness, rather — at best — sentimental recidivism. Advertisement Or take that lovely, precise old verb 'to decimate.' From the Latin 'decimare,' meaning to remove one-tenth. As used of military punishments. When a Roman legion famously — or, should we say, infamously? — fought badly or behaved treasonably, the survivors were lined up and one in 10 of them was killed. It was a terrible punishment but also a very precise one. Then slippage of meaning began, and nowadays the word is used as a synonym of massacre, wipe out, obliterate: in other words, kill more like nine out of 10. I know very good writers, even professors of English, who misuse this term. You could say that they have decimated its meaning. Everyone seems out of step on this except me and a handful of Latin scholars. And every time I see it used in this corrupt sense I feel what Evelyn Waugh once described as 'the senile itch to write letters to the newspapers.' But if I were to use the word in its original, true sense, few would understand me. So the word has gone — or rather, its previous meaning has gone. As a writer, I acknowledge this without celebrating it; as a grumpy citizen, I repine. But as a former lexicographer, I look up the word's history in the OED and realize that this slippage of meaning, which I imagine to be of recent date, was in fact well underway during the 19th century. Language is tidal, oceanic, and the individual standing up with a placard of protest is inevitably washed away by a veritable tsunami ... hmm — 'tsunami.' Now, don't get me started on that.
The Herald Scotland
09-06-2025
- Politics
- The Herald Scotland
The CalMac ferries are just fine. The port is another story
I don't recognise Mr Robertson's picture of sacrificing passenger space on that vessel for crew quarters – there are ample seats all over offering a high standard of comfort and fine views. The CalMac vessels also offer catering and capacity – both appreciated and needed by islanders. There are good reasons for crew quarters and no good ones for changing arrangements. The trade union and employers should be proud of the service offered by Cal Mac staff despite all the difficulties not of their making. The crews, despite Roy Pederson's claims, have strong links with the communities served and relationships are excellent. Just because macro-level infrastructure planning and execution has been messed up over the past 10-plus years is no reason to throw out the baby with the bathwater. I won't claim to speak for everyone on Arran, but I can assure your readers that the main cause of concern here just now is the need to return services to Ardrossan – for reasons well rehearsed already in your columns. Whether the Ardrossan service will last through the period of the summer timetable after its resumption this week with the return of the Caledonian Isles, and whether it will continue in the winter, is open to speculation. There is far more at stake here than ferry design. Colin Turbett, Shiskine, Isle of Arran. Read more letters CMAL again? Why on earth? This SNP Government should rightly be proud of its addition to the Oxford English Dictionary: "behemothitisation: the act of imposing on an organisation an over-large asset consuming excessive consumables in order to deliver a reduced service to the customers who depend upon it at an inordinate cost to the taxpayer ." Is CMAL really being allowed to supervise the design and construction of yet another ferry ("Procurement process for two new Northlink ferries launched", heraldscotland, June 6)? Has this SNP Government learned anything? When will it put economic efficiency ahead of virtue-signalling and the maintenance of incompetent quangos? The Northlink contract should be put out to tender by a suitably qualified and independent civil service five years before award. It should be for 15 years and include the supply, operation and maintenance of brand new ferries by the successful operator, ensuring reliability and reduced costs. Crew numbers should be left to the bidders, allowing additional and significant savings. The current model, of which the Glen Sannox is a prime example, requires the succesful contractor to operate and maintain an unsuitably over-large and inefficient vessel and now the Scottish Government through CMAL is extending its vice-like grip on inefficiency and excessive costs northwards. After awarding a £1 million-per-month, five-month extension to Pentland Ferries to charter the MV Alfred, the overall cost of the two Glen ferries now exceeds £1 billion yet there has been no inquiry as to why. Deputy First Minister Kate Forbes continues to pontificate whether a further £35 million (two-thirds of the original budget) cost should be spent to finish the nine-years-late Glen Rosa. Why? It is an obvious, in her face decision. When shall we see proper governance by this excuse for a Scottish Government? Peter Wright, West Kilbride. We need a forensic inquiry Forensic science will be shutting down at Dundee University in 2026. The work currently undertaken there will fall into another lab. This additional work on existing Scottish forensic labs will undoubtedly result in longer reporting times for regular forensic cases, especially the detection and measurement of drug-driving blood samples. We are already aware that in the recent past, as the six-month analysis deadline approached, samples from Scottish cases were shipped to English labs so that justice can be served. Scotland hopes one day to be a proud independent nation. Will we be relying on England to help us run our justice system? Dundee carries out important drug testing in Scottish prisons. Here we have the Scottish Government losing valuable resources which will impact justice for victims of drug driving. Is this also work that will be lost? Dundee University has forensic science resources that are respected all over the world. This really is a case of saving a penny and watching the future disappear. Duncan Carmichael, York. We must stop the boats Ian McConnell asks 'who should we listen to on immigration policy ("Island of strangers? So who should we listen to on immigration policy?", The Herald, June 6)? I would suggest that it is first necessary to agree that there are two distinct types of immigration – legal and illegal – and that each requires a separate and quite distinct policy. His piece comments only on the former. To complete the picture in a follow-up piece, he could cover the arguments, pro and contra, on the continuing massive level of illegal immigration. The main source of that is the unchecked invasion of thousands of mainly young men by small boats across the Channel, with 50,000 expected this year alone. Does he agree with Keir Starmer (and me for what it's worth) that it is the duty of the Government to stop these small boats, and if not why not? At the same time, he could clarify his general comment dismissing what he called The Prime Minister's 'utterings" on immigration as 'populism" as if that was a dirty word. Is it his opinion that despite reflecting the popular views of ordinary people, Keir Starmer's utterings should be ignored in favour of the contrary views of Mr McConnell as presumably one of the self- appointed elite who knows better? Alan Fitzpatrick, Dunlop. Migrants are good for Britain Tackling the far-right is not done by pandering to them. That simply increases their power, whilst damaging one's own society, as has been the case in the UK. The lesson from across Europe and the rest of the world is to take them on. Their arguments are without validity, and as empty as their promises. Maybe, if we argue for what we believe in, next Christmas there might be more to be cheerful about. Migration helps the economy and makes us all better off, and always has done. Immigrants make up about 40% of the NHS staff. Doctors, nurses, care staff, porters – they keep the NHS running. Far from hampering your chances of getting treatment, they are actually making sure you get it. Anne Wimberley, Edinburgh. Sir Lindsay Hoyle (Image: PA) A failing Speaker In my opinion it is high time to question the actions of the Speaker of the House of Commons, Sir Lindsay Hoyle. He is arguably the worst Speaker ever to hold this high office with many of his decisions being controvertible to say the least, for example the refusal to allow an SNP debate on Gaza on opposition day in 2024, with the House descending into chaos. He also seems unable to facilitate a sensible Prime Minister's Questions where he allows Sir Keir Starmer to blatantly refuse to answer all questions put to him by the Leader of the Opposition, Kemi Badenoch, which in itself, renders the session totally pointless,. He also seems to think it acceptable to squander taxpayers' money on jaunts around the world. Since 2022 it is reported he has spent around £250,000 between flights and hotels, none of the flights being economy and staying only in the best hotels. Why has it been necessary for the House of Commons Speaker to enjoy overseas trips to, amongst many other far-flung places, Singapore, Gibraltar, Canberra, Los Angeles, Ottawa, Tokyo, Delhi, Brazil, the Cayman Islands and his latest jaunt to a conference in the Caribbean, where the cost of hotels he stayed in were up to £900 per night and not ending there, when he also charged £5,500 on private plane flights to St Maarten and Antigua islands, neither of which were on his official itinerary? At a time when there is supposed to be a squeeze on public finances and the current cost of living crisis is causing so much pain for many families across the UK, where heating their homes and putting food on the table is the number one priority and the idea of a holiday just a pipe dream, why is it that public purse is being used to fund such extravagance? It is time to bring the curtain down on these jaunts and use the money saved to contribute towards the reinstatement of the winter fuel allowance to needy pensioners. Christopher H Jones, Giffnock.
The Star
09-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Star
QuickCheck: Is the word 'lah' in the Oxford English Dictionary?
"Lah" is a quintessential expression that adds a Malaysian flavour to conversations. But is it true that it's been added into the Oxford dictionary? IN THE rich tapestry of Malaysian English, the word "lah" stands out as a quintessential expression. It's a word that adds flavour to conversations, conveying emphasis, emotion or even camaraderie. But is it true that "lah" has found its way into the Oxford English Dictionary (OED)? Verdict: TRUE The Oxford English Dictionary has included the word "lah into its lexicon, a significant nod to the uniqueness of Malaysian English. According to the OED, this colloquial particle is used as an interjection to assert or soften a statement, depending on its context and intonation. For instance, "Come on, lah" can convey a friendly urging, while "No need to worry, lah" might offer reassurance. The word's earliest known use in print was in 1956 (though it was definitely in use prior to that) and was first published in the OED in 1997. Alongside "lah," other Malaysian slang have been added to the OED. Most recently, "alamak" was added into the OED in 2025. Also a colloquial interjection, according to the OED "alamak" is used to express surprise, shock, or dismay. This versatile word captures the essence of sudden reactions, whether to unexpected news or minor mishaps. The first known use of the word in print was in 1952. Other words to have made it into the OED as of 2025 include kaya (noun), rendang (noun), ketupat (noun), mat rempit (noun), nasi lemak (noun), otak-otak (noun) and tapau (verb). The recognition of these words in the Oxford English Dictionary celebrates how Malaysian lingo, with its unique expressions and culinary terms, continues to enrich the English language as a whole. So the next time you sprinkle a "lah" into your sentence, know that it's not just a local favourite – it's internationally recognised! References: 1. dictionary/lah_int?tab= meaning_and_use#12813255 2. dictionary/alamak_int?tab= meaning_and_use#1444981330
