Sue Butler
Susan Butler AO was The Editor of the Macquarie Dictionary, Australia’s national dictionary, and, as Editor, was largely responsible for the selection and writing of new words. Susan retired as Editor at the end of 2017. She has written the Dinkum Dictionary, published in its third edition in 2009. In 2014 she wrote The Aitch Factor, a commentary on usage matters in Australian English. She published an e-book called New Words Changes in Australian English in early 2020 and has another book on language matters coming out in October 2020.
Sue's recent articles
11 September 2021
Doing the heavy lifting: Australians' obsession with a metaphor
The Americans have been doing metaphorical heavy lifting since the 1930s. Before that heavy lifting was something done by people, such as wharfies or weight lifters, or machines, such as cranes.
2 June 2020
SUE BUTLER. COVID-19 language outbreak
A new environment requires us to produce new names so that we can identify its elements and come to terms with it.Every settler in a strange terrain goes through the process of naming plants, animals and geographical features.The social landscape altered by a pandemic required some linguistic landmarks.