Vocabulary.com Blog
Articles from August, 2010
Behind the DictionaryLexicographers Talk About Language
Look it Up! A Dictionary by Any Other Name...
News recently broke about words like chillax and vuvuzela getting added to the Oxford Dictionary of English. Merrill Perlman, who writes the "Language Corner" column for Columbia Journalism Review, noticed that many reports of the story couldn't get the name of the dictionary right. Here is her guide for the perplexed.
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Blog Excerpts
Meet the "Turducken"
The Oxford Dictionary of English has announced the addition of more than 2,000 new terms. Meet the turducken ("a roast dish consisting of a chicken inside a duck inside a turkey") and other new entries in the official announcement from Oxford here, and in dictionary editor Catherine Soanes' interview with National Public Radio here.
Have you used any of these words in your writing?
• Low-hanging fruitThey are buzzwords, popular industry words that people use to impress others. Continue reading...
• Learnings
• Efforting
Once again award-winning writer and educator Bob Greenman takes us on a journey through words selected from More Words That Make a Difference, a delightful book illustrating word usage with passages from the Atlantic Monthly.
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A new exhibit at the British Library on the evolution of English will feature some linguistic play that presages the age of "text-speak." As reported by The Guardian, the exhibit will display a comic poem printed in 1867 with lines like "I wrote 2 U B 4" ("I wrote to you before"). I've investigated this proto-text-speak and have found similar versified examples going all the way back to 1828.
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Ever since I wrote an On Language column for the New York Times Magazine about the authenticity of the dialogue on the AMC series "Mad Men," my inbox has been full of questions about words and phrases that have appeared on the show. The most recent episode, set in early 1965, was particularly rich in expressions that set off people's linguistic radar. Here's a look at four questionable examples from the episode.
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I hate the word "webinar."
I don't mind "podcast" or "blogosphere" or "Wikipedia," and I happen to love "netiquette." But there's something about "webinar" that produces a frisson of ickiness every time I see or hear it, an inward "ew." Continue reading...Sign up now (it’s free!)
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