There’s a word for that

Jane Austen once posited it is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. Thanks to Jane, that fellow should be looking for a stout dictionary as well.

An Oxford professor has revealed just how extensively Austen has influenced our language. The beloved author is quoted 1,640 times in the latest edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, including 321 phrases from her 1815 novel Emma, such as “dinner-party” and “brace yourself.”

Surprisingly, given her genteel romantic fiction, Austen is credited with coining great swaths of today’s modern slang. Prof. Charlotte Brewer described the author as “the mistress of the ordinary” in an address last week at the Hay Festival in Hayon-Wye. She says it was Austen who came up with the phrase: “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you 100 times,” as well as the expressions “shut up,” “dirt cheap” and “dog-tired.”

The latest contribution to Austen lore all but trumped the other big linguistic headline of the week.

In France, no stranger to the deep and passionate language of love, a centuries-long oversight has been rectified with the inclusion of a single word in the latest Petit Robert 2014 French dictionary.

The verb “galocher” — to kiss with tongues — finally puts on the books an official French word for a popular pastime that has heretofore gone undefined in the nation’s glossary.