{"id":343888,"date":"2025-08-14T12:54:59","date_gmt":"2025-08-14T12:54:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/343888\/"},"modified":"2025-08-14T12:54:59","modified_gmt":"2025-08-14T12:54:59","slug":"oxford-english-dictionary-the-man-who-coined-brexit-first-appeared-on-euractiv-blog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/343888\/","title":{"rendered":"Oxford English Dictionary: The man who coined ‘Brexit’ first appeared on EURACTIV blog"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nThe word \u2018Brexit\u2019 was coined by EURACTIV, according to the latest edition of the Oxford English Dictionary<\/a>, way back in 2012, in a blog post by Peter Wilding.\n<\/p>\n

\nThe decision came in an update to the third edition of the dictionary, put together by some 50-60 lexicographers, and was put online last month.\n<\/p>\n

\n\"The<\/p>\n

\nIt gives the definition of the word as: \u201cthe (proposed) withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union, and the political process associated with it”.\n<\/p>\n

\nAnd it points readers to a BlogActiv post by Peter Wilding, Stumbling toward the Brexit: Britain, a referendum, and an ever-closer reckoning<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n

\nhttp:\/\/blogactiv.eu\/blog\/2012\/05\/15\/stumbling-towards-the-brexit\/\n<\/p>\n

\nThat dates from 15 May 2012 \u2013 some four years and one month before the fateful June 2016 referendum.\n<\/p>\n

\nThe next earliest usage of the word the Oxford University Press lexicographers could find comes from some five months later, in October 2012, in the Christian Science Monitor<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n

\nThat piece asks: \u201cWhy would the EU consider special economic and trading privileges for Britain after its \u2018Brexit\u2019?\u201d \u2013 a question many in Brussels, if not London, are still asking today.\n<\/p>\n

\nBrexit means…Brexit<\/strong>\n<\/p>\n

\nWhilst the OED definition is both narrow \u2013 and vague \u2013 enough to satisfy most people, the UK Prime Minister, Theresa May, has her own, more self-reflexive, definition: \u201cBrexit means Brexit.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\nQuite what that means, perhaps only May herself knows. The UK political class is currently engulfed in the argument \u2013 also lexicographical \u2013 over \u2018hard Brexit\u2019 versus \u2018soft Brexit\u2019.\n<\/p>\n

\nOr, as former minister Michael Gove, and other Leave campaigners, prefer \u2018clean Brexit\u2019 or \u2018full Brexit\u2019 should replace \u2018hard Brexit’.\n<\/p>\n

\nWilding, who was then working for BskyB when he wrote the post, before leaving to set up British Influence<\/a>, a cross-party Remain campaign, told euractiv.com \u201cThe brutal truth of it is I wrote this blog post, and then promptly forgot all about it.\n<\/p>\n

\n\u201cUntil this summer I got a phone call saying that the Oxford English Dictionary were going to put it in [the dictionary], and I realised I must have coined it.\n<\/p>\n

\n\u201cI can\u2019t pretend there was any \u2018lightbulb\u2019 going off above my head as I though of it \u2013 I think I must have been thinking of \u2018Grexit\u2019, which was the flavour of the month at the time, and come up with \u2018Brexit\u2019 as another portmanteau word.\n<\/p>\n

\n\u201cHaving invented \u2018Brexit\u2019, we [British Influence] are now taking the British government to court to try to ‘solve’ it,\u201d Wilding added, referring to the case being heard by the High Court to allow parliament a say in debating the negotiating terms of Brexit.\n<\/p>\n

\nThat case is due to be heard on either the 19th or 20th of January, with May then set to give a keynote speech setting out the government\u2019s negotiating objectives sometime in February, before Article 50 itself is triggered in March.\n<\/p>\n

\nWilding, whilst modest about his own invention, is sceptical that further such coinages \u2013 such as \u2018Frexit\u2019, for a French EU exit under a possible Marine Le Pen presidency \u2013 \u201cslip off the tongue quite so well.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\nDavid Charter, the then-Brussels correspondent for The Times<\/a>, now in Berlin, is thought to have written the first full-length work on Brexit, his book Au Revoir Europe<\/a>, published later in 2012.\n<\/p>\n

\nThe Oxford English Dictionary, published by the Oxford University Press, is widely-regarded as the ultimate recorded and arbiter of the English language \u2013 or, at least, British English.\n<\/p>\n

\nIt dates back to 1857, although the first edition was not published until 1884.\n<\/p>\n

\nThe 1989 second edition runs to 20 volumes, and some 22,000 pages.\n<\/p>\n

\nSince 1989, the OED has been entirely online, with a \u2018third edition\u2019 a continuing project.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The word \u2018Brexit\u2019 was coined by EURACTIV, according to the latest edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, way…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":343889,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5226],"tags":[802,748,2000,299,5187,1699,4884,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-343888","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brexit","8":"tag-brexit","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-european","13":"tag-european-union","14":"tag-great-britain","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115027229045648499","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=343888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343888\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/343889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=343888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=343888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=343888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}