The Big Issue

by John SimpsonOctober 25, 2016

Cover of the Scots Magazine from 1739 — A cover of the Scots Magazine from 1739

Here’s my article in The Big Issue reflecting on my time at the OED, with a little discussion about the history of the word magazine.

Watching the detectives

by John SimpsonOctober 14, 2016October 14, 2016

Leman Street detectives circa 1886 — H Division of police detectives at Leman Street police station, London, circa 1886

Here’s my guest post on the origins of the word “detective” for the Oxford Dictionaries blog.

Red-letter day

by John SimpsonOctober 13, 2016October 13, 2016

20161013_082729

I share my birthday with some pretty cool people, including Paul Simon (75 today) and Iona Opie (93 today).

And now I also share it with The Word Detective, which by coincidence was published in the UK today.

Dot Wordsworth on “niche”

by John SimpsonOctober 4, 2016October 4, 2016

Frans Snyders, Grapes, Peaches and Quinces in a Niche (wikimedia commons)

Dot Wordsworth talks about “niche” – “an English word that turned into a French one” – in the Mind Your Language column in The Spectator, here. The article is based on my discussion of the word in The Word Detective, and I’m helpfully described as “not our man in the burka, but the former chief editor of the Oxford English Dictionary“.