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Hitting a moving target

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2002

Laurie Bauer
Laurie Bauer
Affiliation:
Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
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Abstract

How rapidly our vocabulary can change, and how yesterday's expressions can vanish without trace. Even words which were used by people the age of the author's children just a few years ago have vanished without trace: untold had a brief flourishing in Wellington as a term of approval, but has vanished completely; grouse, a rather older term, still survives but again not among the young. If old words go, new words come. In a recent survey of the language of primary school children in New Zealand, a word was discovered that all the children knew and virtually none of the teachers knew. To understand the expression, one has to understand something about the games played by children in English-speaking countries.

Type
Original Articles
Information
English Today , Volume 18 , Issue 4 , October 2002 , pp. 55 - 59
Copyright
© 2002 Cambridge University Press

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