[Ads-l] Curious OED Entry for "Styling"

[Jesse Sheidlower]

As other comments in this thread make clear, this Additional entry is unquestionably an adjective.

What I had assumed happened here, and what has now been confirmed by a colleague at OED, is that there was in fact some kind of "adjective" label in the entry, but it failed to appear for technical reasons. That is, when an "Additional sense" entry introduces a new part of speech, that part of speech fails to appear in the rendered view on the website.

The solution for these cases requires manual intervention, and the _styling_ entry was overlooked. It will be fixed. But at bottom this is a technical rather than a lexicographical problem.

Jesse Sheidlower

On Mon, Jun 29, 2026 at 03:37:14PM +0000, Shapiro, Fred wrote:
> There is something that strikes me as curious about the OED entry for "styling, noun."  There is an "Additional Sense" meaning "fashionable or stylish."  Isn't this an adjective rather than a noun?  All of the citations use the word as an adjective.
> 
> Fred Shapiro
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org