1031. This week, Fiona McPherson from the Oxford English Dictionary talks about the latest “beer” words added to the OED, from “boozeroo” to “beerage.” We discuss how these words are chosen, the fascinating history behind them, and why some have surprising origins. Fiona also explains how digital resources have transformed lexicography and shares why the OED preserves every word in the language, even obsolete ones.
1031. This week, Fiona McPherson from the Oxford English Dictionary talks about the latest “beer” words added to the OED, from “boozeroo” to “beerage.” We discuss how these words are chosen, the fascinating history behind them, and why some have surprising origins. Fiona also explains how digital resources have transformed lexicography and shares why the OED preserves every word in the language, even obsolete ones.
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MIGNON: Grammar Girl here. I'm Mignon Fogarty, and today I'm here with Fiona McPherson, Senior Editor at the Oxford English Dictionary, who works on new words. She's been there since 1997. Fiona, welcome to the Grammar Girl podcast.
FIONA: Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here.
MIGNON: Yes, so you, you're on today because the OED has, it's essentially overflowing with new words about beer. There's a big beer update to the OED.
FIONA: Yep. Beer.
MIGNON: So my first question is, how does the OED come to having a beer update? Were you all sitting around at Oktoberfest last year and thought, “Hey, that'd be a good idea. Like, how does that happen…”
FIONA: It is quite handy that Oktoberfest has just happened. I think people thinking about that probably … it made beer foremost in our minds, but of course, we work so far ahead as you alluded to that it's not, it's never that spontaneous. And I think "beer" is one of those words, it's a longstanding word.
It goes back really far back to Old English times. It's one of those staple words, I suppose, and as we're revising the OED and adding new material as well, it was one of those big entries with a lot of also associated words that just seemed good to turn our heads to and turn our editing skills to this time.
MIGNON: Yeah. I was surprised that, maybe I shouldn't be surprised because beer is, as you said, very old. The Sumerians had a goddess of beer. Oh and I looked this up: I was really surprised. So beer is older than wine, apparently. So that was interesting.
FIONA: Yeah.
MIGNON: So a little fact for your pub night.
FIONA: Yeah, so there you go. Exactly. Note that down for your pub quizzes.
MIGNON: And I was surprised, beer is mentioned in "Beowulf," one of the oldest pieces of English literature we have.
FIONA: Yeah. And you said you were surprised, and then you said, "Ah, maybe I shouldn't be surprised." And you're absolutely right. One thing you learn when you're doing this job is to try and never be surprised, but somehow be surprised. You can't stop being surprised. It just happens like that.
But yeah, it is such a, I said staple before, didn't I? But it's such a staple part of everyone's lives, even if you're not indulging. So it goes back so far and as you say, mentioned in "Beowulf." Aldrich talked about "The Owl and the Nightingale" going into Middle English and it's been an ever present from that point onwards.
It's interesting that it's older than wine, but maybe we shouldn't be surprised. I guess it's probably easier to make than wine. Not being a brewer myself, but so it's maybe not that surprising that it's just been around for so long.
MIGNON: What did surprise you about the "beer" words that … as you were working on this update?
FIONA: I suppose, I think the fact that we've got so many words for the act of drinking, shall we say. One, it doesn't start with "beer", but "boozeroo" was one word that really surprised me. And yeah, it sounds quite funny anyway, doesn't it? And it was one which had been in OED2 — sorry, when I say OED2, I don't like to use too much jargon, but inevitably some does fall into my speech — the second edition of the OED, because "boozaroo," to me, sounds like something that's really modern, right? But it was actually already in the OED.
So it's an entry that we were revising. So by that, bringing up to date, making it in line with modern scholarship, et cetera, et cetera. But we also then added quite a few different new senses to it. So it went from being a one-sense entry to multiple sense. So it's actually a word that was originally, it's a slang word, originated in New Zealand, and people would be “on the boozaroo.” So they'd be out drinking, engaged in a bout of heavy drinking. But that phrase has really become obsolete. It's not really used anymore. And similarly, it could mean just getting drunk or heavy drinking.
There's one example that says, “She pleaded guilty to boozeroo, but denied with vehemence that she was a rogue and vagabond.” So that's from 1910. But again, that's now rare. But what you are finding is it's still used to mean an occasion where heavy drinking takes place. Originally, again, in New Zealand, but it's widened out more so you're finding it in other parts of the world as well. And it can also be the name for a pub, which is the one which I probably would have expected it to be.
Somehow. I would have expected, “Shall we go down the boozeroo,” or “Someone's out in the boozeroo for the evening.” The other senses were ones that surprised me a little bit more because I wouldn't have necessarily, I wasn't expecting it to have that many meanings than I would have thought.
I suppose because you've got the word “boozer,” which means a pub, that we use certainly in British English. So it's really just taking that word and putting “aroo” on the end in that kind of slightly tongue in cheek, amusing way to make another word, but no, it was way more senses than I was expecting.
And like I say, one thing you should learn about doing, you learn about this job pretty early on is don't be that surprised by how language works, but yet you still find yourself being surprised by it. It's inevitable I think.
MIGNON: Yeah, I'm actually surprised because for me "boozeroo" calls to mind "buckaroo," so I would have thought it would have been a name for a person who drinks.
FIONA: Yeah.
Yeah, it's funny how these associations just work in your head, doesn't it? That's what it leads … it will lead you to think of something which may or may not have something to do with it. But, in this case, no, I don't think there's any, anything to do with a name for someone who does it, but you could imagine it. Who knows, don't second guess is what I say.
MIGNON: Yeah, right, is that “aroo” ending, is it used in New Zealand English, or Australian English for, place names like a bar name or something like some other kind of place name or action?
FIONA: And yeah, the one, it's something that I definitely would have associated with that part of the world, but maybe I am being influenced by I think the nickname for their football team is the Socceroos or something like that. So maybe I'm thinking about that.
But yeah, it's used in quite a lot of, it is used in "buckaroo," obviously. It's just another spelling, E R O O or you could have A R O O which apparently is a borrowing from Spanish. There you go. But yes, you see that in Australian words, quite a lot, "kangaroo" is an obvious one, and that's of a different kind of origin, obviously. But yeah, you find it in a lot of places, and I think now it can almost be put onto the end of anything. I mentioned “puckaroo,” that's a New Zealand slang word, meaning "to break, destroy." So I think it is, it's quite a productive suffix, I would say, as well.
MIGNON: Excellent. A name you did highlight for me that is in the OED in this update, for a person is, "beer hound" or "beer bombard." What is that? Tell me more about that.
FIONA: I think especially “beer bombard” just sounds kind of so I don't know. It's a really kind of highfalutin word. And then when you realize, you know what it means, then maybe it's not, not quite as highfalutin as it sounds. And we also have “beer baron” as well. So there are, there are quite a lot of words for people who are associated with beer in some way.
But yeah, “beer bombard” is quite a nice one. It's a large, also a large flagon or similar vessel for holding beer. Okay, so that initially was what it was, but then it came to be used in a more figurative way to mean a person who regularly or habitually drinks a lot of beer. It's a little, it's probably historical now, if you see it being used.
I don't think anybody's necessarily using it in current English, shall we say. But it is a rather nice one, I think. And from beer obviously and “bombard” now, which obviously make them also make you think of cannons and all that kind of thing as well, but it's the idea of it being a jug or bottle for liquor, which is probably where they've borrowed that from, I would say.
MIGNON: Yeah, and I always think of people writing historical fiction when we have these wonderful words that aren't used anymore, but could be so much fun to pop up in a novel.
FIONA: Exactly, and that's the great thing about historical dictionaries as well, is that you're not only, yes, we are also involved in the business of, modern English as well, clearly, but you can discover, you can go down a rabbit hole and discover all of these kind of very evocative somehow, even just from saying the name of it, it kind of puts you into a time and place. and that, that can just be absolutely fascinating to read all that kind of stuff as well. So, it's more than just really telling you what a word means. It's going to tell you the history, the period of time it was used, and whether or not people are still using it into the present day, or whether you're really only getting it in these historical or more archaic, contexts. But “beer, hound,” that's obviously a U.S. word, originally, certainly. I suppose you could say that's a modern “beer bombard,” isn't it? People are still talking about beerhounds. People who are particularly, who particularly enjoy a beer enthusiast, you might say.
MIGNON: Yeah, and, “beer baron,” that one is highfalutin, right? I was surprised there was a word for this.
FIONA: Yeah, it does sound a little bit like that because of "baron" being a member of the nobility. Yeah, a beer baron is a successful or powerful figure in the beer industry, so someone who's got a lot of influence also in public life or political affairs. But there's also a sense which arose during the prohibition era. And that would be maybe a little bit less highfalutin, which would be a person involved in illegal production, trafficking, or distribution of beer. So, you've got those two different senses, all both to do very much with the production of beer and liquor or alcoholic beverages, if you like, but one little bit more highfalutin than the other one.
MIGNON: Yeah. Yeah. You know you talk about prohibition. Like beer has played, going back to Sumaria to prohibition, another fascinating tidbit that always jumped out at me about beer is that, Noah Webster, I was reading a biography of Noah Webster, and it said he had beer for breakfast every morning because…
FIONA: Wow.
MIGNON: …people just did in his era because the water wasn't safe to drink.
And so they drank a lot more beer than I would have thought.
FIONA: Well, you mentioned Oktoberfest. I actually live in Munich, and we, there's a thing here called Weißwurstfrühstück, which is where they'll have a Weißwurst. But normally, I'm not saying that happens every day, maybe at the weekends, but they also have a Weißsbier with that for breakfast. A bit more special occasion now.
MIGNON: What is that?
FIONA: Wheat beer. So Weißwurst is the white sausage, but a Weißbeer is, yeah, it's wheat beer. So the sort of slightly cloudy one. And that's a thing. Like I say, maybe not a thing every day, but, or maybe it used to be, back in Noah Webster's time over here, but, yeah, that is also a thing.
A beer for breakfast, why not?
MIGNON: Less unheard of than you might imagine.
FIONA: Exactly.
MIGNON: And, thinking, you brought up historical words and words that aren't commonly used anymore. Another thing I came across while I was preparing is that, unlike other dictionaries, is it true that the Oxford English Dictionary never removes a word?
FIONA: Pretty much, yeah. It's a historical dictionary, so what we're interested in is telling the story of a word from the time it entered the language. As far as we're able to ascertain, obviously, doing research, there's so many more sources available to us now than, even in terms of how long I've been doing the job, but if you think back to the editors who worked on the first edition of the dictionary back in late Victorian times, they didn't have the internet, they didn't have computers, etc.
So we have many more resources, but we're always, so we're always trying to find that first example in English as far as the resources we have at our disposal will allow. And then telling the story of the word, if it developed additional senses, if some of those senses dropped out, they've still made an impact on the language, and they're still telling part of the story. So we wouldn't remove a word or a term just because it had become obsolete or wasn't used anymore or was used very rarely. We may recast sometimes. Part of the job we're doing is updating the language of the definitions and that kind of thing. So we may treat something slightly differently perhaps than the original editors did because we're basing this on modern scholarship. But we never remove, no, we never remove anything just because it's old hat or nobody talks about it anymore. That very thing is actually part of its story and is of interest.
MIGNON: Yeah. And you might just add a tag like “archaic” or “obsolete” for certain meanings.
FIONA: Yes, or obsolete. Yep, exactly. Or "rare" or, sometimes a word, I don't know, maybe it would only persist in certain areas or certain types of discourse. If that's significant, we would note that. But, yeah, it's telling the story, but part of that story we'll be labeling it, as appropriate as you just said.
MIGNON: I always forget what the difference is between archaic and obsolete as a dictionary tag.
FIONA: Yeah, it really … I think, yeah, exactly. It's oh no, don't test me on it. No, yeah.
MIGNON: I’m sorry.
FIONA: Obsolete, tends to mean people aren't actually using it. Archaic would be in those cases where, maybe in historical fiction, where someone is deliberately looking to say something which sounds old fashioned or archaic or that would be where we would use something like that.
So you're seeing it in use in modern text, but the text itself isn't intended to be modern text, you're trying to convey something else, I think.
MIGNON: Okay. Yeah. I mean, we were talking about history but, you work on new words, right? So tell me about some of those new "beer" words.
FIONA: Yeah, the funny thing about new words is that when you start off you think, “Oh yes, this looks new," but when you actually do the research, it goes back a lot further than you think. That's a sort of mantra, even for us new words editors: it's older than you think. So, a lot of them are not, we're not talking about words which have necessarily just sprung up in the last five years.
Sometimes they go back a lot longer than that. So, one of the senses of "beer" that we've just added is where it's kind of used in that first figurative way. So you've got something like a beer coat or a beer blanket, which if you've, let's just say, if you have drunk sufficient alcohol, and this is the interesting thing with this, it needn't be beer. We call it a "beer coat" or a "beer blanket," but it needn't be beer, it could be some other kind of alcohol that you've taken, and suddenly you're impervious to the cold because, you know, you've drunk enough so that you're not really feeling the cold.
And that's so that's "beer" being used normally in combination with something like coat or blanket or I suppose jumper, anything which, you know, you can, and I suppose it's kind of like the whole idea of beer goggles as well, where it can, not that we've added that this time, but it's that same kind of idea that you know the effect, alcohol is having a particular effect, which in this case is making you impervious to the cold.
MIGNON: And that should, that actually, we should say that that can be dangerous because you're not impervious to the cold. You just don't feel it.
FIONA: You think you are. Yes. You're apparently impervious to it. Yeah, exactly. So that was quite a nice one and something which I think probably recognized as something which, you know, probably, I think we've all maybe experienced it before, even if we didn't realize it at the time, as you say, it's the apparent imperviousness.
But “beerage” is another word we've added. So that's really just "beer" as a type of beverage or beers, sort of thought of collectively. You know in all of their glory. But again, the interesting thing there is that “beerage” was already in the OED. It is a chiefly, so we revised this sense and added the beer as a type of beverage one, but in a sort of humorous or satirical context.
So it's back to your beer barons, I suppose, wealthy or powerful or influential people who are associated with brewing or the beer industry sort of thought of as a class or group. So that's quite a nice one as well, I think.
MIGNON: And they’re the beerage?
FIONA: They’re the beerage. So it's kind of like peerage in, with the idea of, the sort of the British, uh, how do, how, how do I describe it without sounding, peerage?
MIGNON: I don't think we use that in the US
FIONA: No, you probably don't. And see, that's another thing that's so fascinating about language is when you talk about some things and you're like, well, yeah, you know, you know what I mean, the peerage. And it's like, yeah, it doesn't really exist. In the same kind of way. The peerage is sort of the noble classes, the nobility.
So if you get a peerage in Britain, you're normally given a title like, Lord or Sir or something like that. So it's the body of noble people as a class. I mean, it also exists in other countries as well, I think in France, although it's historical now in France, obviously. And so it's a play on that.
So you've got "beer." And then you're sort of melding that with “peerage” to come up with “beerage," because why not?
MIGNON: That's fun. And talking again about maybe bad things that beer can do to you, there's a funny word for beer belly that you highlighted and I'm not sure how to pronounce it actually.
FIONA: Is this a South African word that you may be referring to?
MIGNON: Yes.
FIONA: I think it’s “beer boep.” Yes. It's gratifying that, you know, we have beer belly and, you know, those kinds of words in English, in British English or US English, but it's very, it's kind of gratifying that there's also, this exists in other, in other varieties of English as well.
And yeah, it's a bit of a more of a disparaging word, I think, although I suppose beer belly itself is not that undisparaging, is it? When someone mentions it. But yeah, a word for a protuberant belly or ponch. Typically on a man, it has to be said, which is as a result of drinking too much beer, really.
MIGNON: And then that is very fun to say. Beer boep!
FIONA: It is, isn't it? It is. Yeah, so it's just, I don't know, it's always nice when you see the kind of thing reflected, I suppose in other varieties of English. Yeah, it just a beer belly, another word for it. And it's probably, that's a new one that we've added. But it goes back to the 1980s.
That's when we first found it in a newspaper, Johannesburg newspaper.
MIGNON: Cool. And you’ve already told me multiple times not to be surprised, but here's another one that surprised me. I'm just going to say it. So beer off, like a beer off, I imagined some kind of competition in a bar or a pub.
FIONA: It does sound like it, it does sound like it, doesn't it? No, it's a shop that's licensed to sell beer or other alcoholic drinks as well, off the premises. So, uh, it's an English regional word most commonly used in the East Midlands and Yorkshire. That's where you'd find it in use. And so, I mean, I don't know, we would talk about that as an off license.
I don't know. I don't know what if you have a word in U.S. English for that? An off license is basically, you know, a place that can sell alcohol as long as the person who's buying it drinks it off the premises. So, you know, it's obviously not a pub then.
MIGNON: Oh, I'm not aware that we have something like that.
FIONA: It’s clearly a British term. Again, here's me going to be surprised by English. You would use, I would just use that quite happily, not thinking that I might say to someone's like, “Oh, we don't have that, that word or that term.”
MIGNON: And there probably aren't other kinds of shops that are off because it's related to very specifically the licensing
FIONA: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Exactly. You can also say “off sale." That's another word for the same thing off sale, which is an off license or this shop that off premises that I've been talking about. But it does sound a little bit like if you would have a beer off, it'd be some kind of competition, doesn't it?
It's got that sort of sign to do it, but no, it's just a place to go and buy your beer.
MIGNON: Yeah, like a bake off, but with beer.
FIONA: But it's not, exactly. But it could be. And who's to say that it might not end up being, you know? Again, that's the thing, you don't second guess how language works. And when you've got something, like you said, “bake off," which has that meaning, and there'll be plenty of other, you know, examples, “cake off," I suppose.
That sounds a bit more like bake off as well. When language works in that kind of way, that means there's every chance that that's going to work with a similar combination to have that same kind of meaning or to have that same, certainly with the off part of it, the idea of a contest.
So, I mean, it could be, it's not difficult to imagine that that could certainly develop that meaning.
MIGNON: Yeah. Well, before we wrap up, I'm curious because you've been at the OED since 1997, and obviously you already mentioned the like digital resources that you now have available. Like what else has changed? I mean, it's such an institution. It's been around for so long, but what have you seen change in the time you've
FIONA: The most significant change was definitely going online. Okay, but that was a long time ago now. That was only three years into my tenure there. But when I first started, we were very much working towards sort of a hard publishing deadline in terms of getting the book finished before we did any kind of publication.
And given that the second edition of the OED has 20 volumes, that was always going to take a long time. And of course we did have deadlines, but it was a little bit more difficult to think of it in those kind of terms because that deadline was kind of so far off in the future and the ultimate deadline.
But when we decided to publish and to go online, publish every quarter the results of our research and the work that we did. That was an absolutely massive change and we’ve, I want to say revitalized or rejuvenated how you thought about the job that you do because it's so much more exciting knowing that the stuff that you're working on now, okay, there's always a lead in, obviously, we're not … the thing I'm working on today is not going to be published tomorrow, but it's going to be published pretty soon, certainly in comparison to what it was.
So that for me was probably the most major thing. And it was a really big deal for the OED to do. But it is the digital, you're absolutely right. It's being able for me to access, I don't know, a regional newspaper that's been published in a small town in a U.S. state that I've never been to, or I can now access that rather at sort of the touch of a button, if you like, or something like an Australian newspaper or something like that.
It's having that immediate, pretty much immediate access to so many things that have been digitized. And of course, that just keeps on carrying on a pace, doesn't it? More and more things are digitized now. And that's been a real, that's another, a little bit more recent, although it's been happening for a long time.
But that instant access to things that previously you would have just had to have been lucky enough to have had a copy in your hand or somebody you knew having read it, drawing your attention to it. It can lead to information overload, but it also is, it's an amazing boon to the work that we do.
And it allows you to be able to, you know, the scholarship that you do is based on so much, such a bigger body of evidence and that obviously then improves what you can find out about language and how it works.
MIGNON: Yeah, it is amazing. I'm a subscriber and I use the online OED almost every day, and it's hard to imagine having to have the 20 volume set of books. I would never probably be able to have that.
FIONA: It takes up a lot, a lot of bookshelf space, right? And that's the thing as well. The work that we're doing, when we, so we call it antedating, when we find an earlier example of a word. And when these earlier examples, they would have existed when the first editors were preparing it. But of course, they didn't have access to it unless somebody happened to be looking at something.
And one that really struck me was, if you think of the word, and it works quite nicely actually with what we've been talking about, beer. “Open," the adjective "open," talking about a shop or a pub or a bar being ready for business, ready to accept customers. Before we revised that, the earliest example we had was, I think, from 1824, certainly 18 something, which, yeah okay, that sounded okay.
When we revised it, we found it went back to Old English times and had been used constant, not constantly, but had been used through all that time, right up to the present day. Now, all of those examples existed when the first editors were preparing it, but they were tantalizingly out of reach.
So that makes you really realize how lucky we are to have just so much more access to sources that allow us to paint a fuller picture, really, of the language.
MIGNON: Yeah. That's amazing. That's a huge jump
FIONA: A thousand years, near enough, you know, so.
MIGNON: Yeah. Well, thank you so much for being here and explaining the "beer" words and the history of the OED. For Grammarpalooza subscribers, but you can do that through Apple Podcasts or Subtext, we're going to have a bonus segment that you'll find in your feed. Fiona and I are going to talk about some of her book recommendations, and I'm going to quiz her about some beer words I found in the Urban Dictionary.
And we're going to talk about the OED's expansion more into World English, Englishes. So, if you're a Grammarpalooza subscriber, look for that in your feed. If you're not a subscriber, you can get a free trial and test it out and see if you like it and listen to it as well.
So, Fiona McPherson, senior editor at the OED. Thank you so much for being here.
FIONA: Thank you very much for having me, it's been a pleasure.