OED: We're right on message

The latest release of material on OED Online is the first to contain new entries from across the alphabet. Quarterly online publication provides an opportunity to publish new material more frequently than before, and to make available research on words and phrases which, as part of the main revision programme, would not be published for some years in their alphabetical sequence.

Our aim in the new-words group is to apply the OED's historical approach to contemporary material. This first batch of 250 or so entries is designed to reflect both the diversity of the language we record, and the depth of our research.

Many of the terms are quite familiar, but their origins and early history are sometimes surprising. They range from political hot potatoes such as GM foods, human BSE, and the postcode lottery, to cultural icons such as Bollywood, the mullet haircut, and Homer Simpson's doh! The publication of new out-of-sequence entries allows the OED to catch up with the terminology of the Internet.

The June OED Online update contains for the first time browsers, chat rooms, cookies, dotcoms, FAQs, and MP3 files, and of course, the Internet itself. We hope that the two complete sample entries for contemporary items shown above give a taste of the new material being added to the OED, while the list below shows the complete list of new words published this release.