Vocabulary.com Blog
Articles from March, 2011
This weekend, the Brooklyn Bridge Marriott will once again host the 34th American Crossword Puzzle Tournament — the premier annual gathering of word nerds. Presided over by New York Times puzzle editor Will Shortz, the ACPT promises to provide just as much competitive drama as past years.
Continue reading...
I was recently asked by a young and annoyingly successful poet how I thought language learners dealt with the special demands that poetry puts on the reader, and the discussion that followed led us into a marvelous land.
Continue reading...
Blog Excerpts
The Birth of a Word
Wouldn't it be amazing if you could capture every moment of a child's language development? Deb Roy, a researcher at MIT, managed to do just that with his infant son. After wiring his house with video cameras, he then analyzed "the world's largest home video collection" to show how a bit of babble became a word. See Roy's TED talk here.
The Wall Street Journal recently reported that the Obama administration is "urging protesters from Bahrain to Morocco to work with existing rulers toward what some officials and diplomats are now calling 'regime alteration.'" That sounds like a kinder, gentler version of regime change, which itself has a euphemistic ring to it. If President Obama came into office riding a wave of change, why is that word suddenly problematic?
Continue reading...
Blog Excerpts
The Story of "She"
In 2000, the American Dialect Society picked the Word of the Millennium: she, which entered English in the 12th century. But where did the word come from, exactly? Visual Thesaurus contributor Stan Carey writes on his Sentence First blog that its origins remain shrouded in mystery. Read all about it here.
Behind the DictionaryLexicographers Talk About Language
When News Breaks, People Look it up in the Dictionary
The Internet may be the new newspaper, but it's also become the new dictionary, and the two are inextricably linked: when news breaks, people rush online to find out what it means, and whether it's a noun or a verb.
Continue reading...
Unless you've been living under a rock for the past week, you've witnessed the spectacular media meltdown of Charlie Sheen unfold before your eyes. The endless stream of over-the-top pronouncements in Sheen's recent interviews has been captivating, and Sheenisms have quickly become inescapable online, especially on Twitter (where Sheen managed to attract a million followers in just over 24 hours). Tiger blood and Adonis DNA. Rock star from Mars. Gnarly gnarlingtons. Vatican assassin warlocks. And, of course, winning, the buzzword to beat them all. Does any of Sheen's frenetic verbiage have a chance of being remembered beyond the current moment of celebrity Schadenfreude, or should I say Sheenenfreude?
Continue reading...
Sign up now (it’s free!)
Whether you’re a teacher or a learner,
Vocabulary.com can put you or your class
on the path to systematic vocabulary improvement.