Ancestry Magazine

Better with words than people? Then the Oxford English Dictionary wants you. The 250-year-old dictionary, already brimming with more than 600,000 terms, wants to make sure they have the pedigree straight on 40 of those, just to be sure everyone is in agreement as to exactly where those words came from.

Get out those dusty journals, diaries, and letters from home, and check your e-mail archive (there are some post-1990 words). If you can offer an appropriate, in-context reference to any of the 40 terms—and prove that the usage predates what the OED already believes to be true—you might get to help write the dictionary. And make your family’s mark on history.

Just what is the OED looking for? Try a few of the following:

bananas (pre-1968)
bonkers (pre-1957)
flip-flop (pre-1970)
hoodie (pre-1990)
kinky (pre-1959)
loo (pre-1940)
one sandwich short of a picnic (pre-1993)
shaggy dog story (pre-1946)
sick puppy (pre-1985)
stiletto (pre-1959)
spiv (pre-1934)
wolf-whistle (pre-1952)

If it looks simple, well, it isn’t. The OED is seeking very specific meanings of each of these terms (“bananas” and “kinky,” for example, refer to neither fruit nor hair). Get the entire list as well as all of the details at www.oed.com/bbcwordhunt/list.html.