The clever men at Oxford: a rant.

The clever men at Oxford
Know all that there is to be knowed
But they none of them know half as much
As intelligent Mr Toad.

The makers of the Oxford English Dictionary (a construct of glistening genius and deep learning) have announced their Word of the Year.

It's climate emergency.

Now, I don't expect these unparalleled experts on the English language (and many other languages, too) to be particularly knowledgeable about anything else. I don't expect them to be fully conversant with Special Relativity, Techniques for picking the winner the next Grand National, or Knitting the Heel of a Sock.

But, really, you'd have thought they could have managed to count up to two.

Climate emergency? They should have noticed that there was more than word there - or, if they wanted to award the prize to a single entity (this year's Booker and Turner Prizes notwithstanding) then climate emergency is a compound noun.

If they'd wanted a single word then climate would have done. Or emergency. 

Or, dither, come to think about it. 

Ah well.

Compound noun to Use Today: climate emergency. The word climate comes from the Greek word klima, which means inclination or region, which comes from klinein, to lean. Emergency is to do with emerging. It comes from the Latin word mergere, to dip.

I thought about looking up the word dither, but in the end I didn't get round to it.

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