Wordorigins.org

The Oxford English Dictionary has 158 words with first citations from 1985. In that year, WIMPs, buckminsterfullerene, and anime delighted geekdom; aerobies and Rollerblades were the latest and greatest toys; Rambo epitomized a revived, post-Vietnam American aggressiveness; and the appearance of adware, big boxes, semtex, and intifada might be considered to make 1985 an annus horribilis.

The Oxford English Dictionary has 163 words with first citations from 1984. In that year, netizens double-clicked to dump unwanted messages into kill files; a sneakernet was no guarantee of avoiding a computer virus; Macs rolled out of the fab; the FTSE appealed to paleo-conservatives; and yuppies became a social phenomenon.

The Oxford English Dictionary has 166 words with first citations from 1983. In that year, the most productive source of neologisms appears to be computing, with hot keys, MUDs, sysadmins, spell-check, and WANs, among other words; technologies that would blossom in later decades make their appearance, like cellphones and print on demand; moshing, MIDI, and beat-boxes were sweeping the music world; and the genre of cyberpunk was getting underway.

The Oxford English Dictionary has 200 words with first citations from 1982. In that year, British troops yomped to Stanley in their campaign against the Argies, although they probably would have preferred to ride in Humvees; veejays played a song that featured Valspeak; cyberspace became constrained by netiquette; and AIDS makes its appearance.

Quite a good dialect mimic here. He slips up from time to time (like saying “take a piss” when doing the American accent), but he’s really quite good.

Warning: there’s a lot of four-letter words, so it may be NSFW (not safe for work). Also, you may want to skip the lengthy intro and just dive into the accents which start at about the one-minute mark.

(Hat Tip: Geoffrey K. Pullum at Language Log)

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The Oxford English Dictionary has 165 words with first citations from 1981. In that year, computing gave us multicast, auto-correct, and undelete; def B-boys were dancing on street corners; one could home school one’s child in the hope, or fear, that he might become a poindexter; and if things got too much for you, you could just take a chill pill.

A few days late, but a nice NY Times article by Erin McKean on the use of neologisms.

(Tip o’ the hat to Languagehat.)

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I just discovered this site that contains PDF versions of the volumes from Harvard’s Loeb Classical Library that have passed into the public domain. The volumes contain both the original Latin or Greek and English translations.

Tip o’ the Hat to J. J. Cohen at the In the Middle blog.

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The Oxford English Dictionary has 162 words with first citations from 1980. In that year, the computer world was all abuzz about RISC, coprocessors, and Usenet; foodies smacked their lips over Buffalo wings; comb-overs weren’t fooling anyone; and the inventors of Rubik’s cube and the Walkman cashed in, ka-ching!

The Oxford English Dictionary has 162 words with first citations from 1979. In that year, the world of entertainment brought us CDs, fluffers, karaoke, high concept, and improv; the Twinkie defense had its day in court; antiretroviral drugs and EpiPens were new medical advances; neo-cons squared off against New Agers; and high tech brought us SQL, email, and intranets.