It’s time once again to check in with the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary to see what new words they’ve officially added to the English language …

Well, as it turns out, one of the new words they’re adding is songline, which describes something that’s been around for thousands of years. The Australian Aboriginal tribes have a tradition of using landmarks, petroglyphs, and ancient pictures and patterns on rocks to connect themselves to their landscape, creating songs to help them remember these mental maps. It’s a way of retaining their history through chants and stories, and also a way to chart their paths through the vast empty expanses of the Australian outback. According to legend, the first songlines were created by the gods during the Dreamtime, and those traces can be followed today – if you know the right songs.

Since the 14th century, the noun curate has been used to refer to a priest or member of the clergy who cares for the people in the region around a specific church, looking after their physical and spiritual health. The word comes from the Latin root curare, meaning “to take care of.” The new 20th-century meaning for the word also involves a measure of care, but now is a verb that describes the act of selecting objects or artists for a show. Someone who curates a museum exhibit, for example, is responsible for selecting which items to display, how they will be arranged, what signs and labels will be used to help visitors identify and understand the items, and how the exhibit will be advertised on the museum’s website.

Anyone dealing with websites and computers is aware of the problem of maintaining a secure site, and protecting information from hackers and data thieves. In response to this technological problem, the OED has added a technological slant to the noun security, which expands the meaning “to protect from unauthorized access” (formerly only used in a physical sense) to include internet safety against a virtual “break and enter” event.

In this post, we talked about carbon sequestration as a method of reducing global warming by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. In September’s updates, the OED added the new word biochar to the English lexicon. As you might guess from the two halves of this portmanteau word, biochar is the charcoal created by burning biological matter (plants, in this case) which can then be stored away.

We hope you’re storing all of these new words in your memory, because we’re sure you’ll have an opportunity to use them before the next OED update comes out.