From hangry to mansplain: spend a little ‘me time’ with the latest OED update

The latest update of the Oxford English Dictionary includes more than 1,100 new entries, phrases, and senses from around the alphabet, including a selection of new entries relating to the language of modern parenting. Our Head of US Dictionaries, Katherine Connor Martin, takes a closer look at some of the highlights below.

Mansplain

Just a decade ago, the verb mansplain did not exist, but the word and the concept (a man’s action of explaining something needlessly, overbearingly, or condescendingly, especially to a woman, in a manner thought to reveal a patronizing or chauvinistic attitude) are now an established part of English-language discourse.

The first known usages of the verb and of the related noun mansplaining are in a pair of comments on the social networking website LiveJournal in August 2008; an influential essay on the topic of ‘Men who explain things’ was published by Rebecca Solnit a few months earlier, and is often credited with popularizing the concept, but it did not use the term mansplain.

 

 

Thanks for the mansplaintion Del. this was already covered