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Dictionary recognises stolen generation

While Australia still faces arguments over the validity of the term, the Oxford has no such concerns.

"Stolen generation. Noun. Australian. The Aboriginal people forcibly removed from their families as children between the 1900s and the 1960s, to be brought up by white foster families or in institutions," the latest revised edition released in London today says.

The decision to include the term was made on the recommendation of the Oxford's Australian-based consultant and was backed by a search of the dictionary's massive computerised database, which captures examples of new words or unfamiliar uses of words found in newspapers, magazines and books sent in by teams of readers.

"Obviously the phenomenon is familiar to us but we didn't realise that it had that specific name," project editor Sara Hawker said.

"We checked on our database and found a lot of evidence for this term. So we decided on the basis of that that we should include it."

The Oxford team was unaware of arguments the term is misleading because it implies an entire generation was taken from their families, rather than one in 10 children.

But Ms Hawker said if the word did have a particular political connotation, it could have a note reflecting that added when the dictionary was next revised - in two years' time.

"We aren't always aware of the undercurrents or the political currents flowing around the term," she said.

"It certainly does seem to be used and gaining currency, and we did think it was worth including.

"I'll make a note of it and we can think about whether we should refine how we define it in future editions."

The new dictionary also includes another term relating to Aborigines, koori, which was removed from the 1999 version but has been reinstated on the advice of the Australian-based consultant.

"It was a lack of awareness on our part of the centrality of it in Australian English. Sometimes we can miss that, we can be unaware of how central a word is. But because we're reissuing and republishing the dictionary we've been able to make up for that mistake," Ms Hawker said.

Another Australian word making its first appearance is "pokie", defined as an informal Australian noun for a fruit machine.

"It's a nice colourful word," Ms Hawker said.

"The term seemed to be being used not only in Australia but in other areas so it's a term that's gaining some currency, perhaps because a lot of Australian people come over here to work and they might be mentioning it. So then we'll have pokies too before too much longer."

Other new words entering the dictionary include: bladdered, British slang for extremely drunk; baguette, the handbag not the breadstick; both deep-vein thrombosis and economy class syndrome; and snakeheads, the Chinese criminal gangs which organise people smuggling networks.

This article is from The Australian

Further information: stolen generations issues page - includes news index and external links