Vocabulary.com Blog
Articles from February, 2009
Yesterday's Visual Thesaurus Word of the Day was mayonnaise, and the entry for it was a bit too terse for some readers: "This French word has enjoyed a handful of spellings since its first 19th-century appearance and merits an etymology of nearly 300 words in the OED, the gist of which is 'origin uncertain.'" There's nothing less satisfying in an etymological explanation than "origin uncertain," so let's explore what's behind those tantalizing words.
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Greg H. of Boston, MA writes in with today's Mailbag Friday question: "When President Obama was interviewed about Tom Daschle's decision to bow out of the nomination process for Health and Human Services, he gave this mea culpa: 'Did I screw up in this situation? Absolutely. I'm willing to take my lumps.' I understand he means that he's taking the blame for the situation, but where do the 'lumps' come from?"
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Recently, my friend Diane started feeling nauseous and passing out. After a scary trip to the emergency room, she learned the problem was her heart: it kept stopping every once in a while, so she was strongly advised to get a pacemaker. (She now has one and is doing great, thank Zeus.)
But when Diane was debating what to do, a doctor not only came down in favor of pacemaker insertion, but a certain word choice as well:
"Oh, it's not a surgery," the doctor said. "It's only a procedure." Continue reading...
Today marks the 50th anniversary of the passing of Buddy Holly, who died in a plane crash along with Ritchie Valens and J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson. Rather than glumly mope about "The Day the Music Died," as Don McLean dubbed the tragedy in the well-worn song, "American Pie," I'd prefer to reflect on what a tremendously gifted singer/songwriter Holly was. He had a beautiful touch with the English language (sung in his signature hiccupy style), and in his lyrics he found ways to take familiar words and phrases and innovatively shape them into his own. Here are my brief thoughts on the language of four of his songs.
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Is a picture worth a thousand words? Possibly, but if your job is to assign words to pictures, it would be good if you could reduce that number a bit, and perhaps focus on quality rather than quantity. This month in the Lounge we've been thinking about the relationship between words and pictures, while in recovery from a brief addiction to Google Image Labeler.
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