Vocabulary.com Blog
Articles from June, 2013
Word RoutesExploring the pathways of our lexicon
Words in the Courtroom, from Mobspeak to "Argle-Bargle"
American courtrooms can produce some fascinating linguistic specimens. Two high-profile court cases have put language on display. In Boston, the trial of mob boss James "Whitey" Bulger has provided testimony full of old-school crime lingo. Meanwhile, at the Supreme Court, Justice Antonin Scalia's dissenting opinion on the Defense of Marriage Act featured some "legalistic argle-bargle."
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Vocabulary Shout-Out: Scott Shane for "Bedeviled"
A word to use when not assigning blame.
In chronicling WikiLeaks' involvement in the unfolding Edward J. Snowden affair, Scott Shane, who is the national security reporter in the Washington bureau of The New York Times, made use of the word bedevil in "Offering Snowden Aid, WikiLeaks Gets Back in the Game."
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Topics:
Vocabulary
"How long did you have to queue up?" I asked my brother about a concert he'd attended, just after I got back from a trip to the UK. "You're back in America now, Shannon," he teased me. "We don't queue up here, we line up!" He had a point, but I'd like to think my word choice was not merely the result of my Anglophile tendencies.
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Ten Words from "The NY Times" - June 26, 2013
Ten Words from "The NY Times" - June 26, 2013
Learn Ten Words from The NY Times - June 26, 2013. Then see "Vocabulary Begets Vocabulary: The More You Know, the More You Learn" to understand why learning these words will help you absorb even more as you read.
Topics:
Vocabulary
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List of the Week: L. Frank Baum's "Oz" Series
You've seen the movie...no learn the Vocabulary Lists!
Summer is the perfect time to delve into not just L. Frank Baum's classic children's novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, but the entire "Oz" cycle. As you read, enrich your vocabulary by learning interactive word lists based on these timeless stories.
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Behind the DictionaryLexicographers Talk About Language
The Highest Dictionary in the Land? The Supreme Court and Definitions
Judges, like the rest of us, turn to dictionaries when they're not sure about the meaning of a word. Or they turn to dictionaries when they're sure about a word's meaning, but they need some confirmation. Or they turn to a dictionary that defines a word the way they want it defined, rejecting as irrelevant, inadmissible, and immaterial any definitions they don't like.
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As children the world over are released from school for summer vacations and long, lazy afternoons lost in good books, journalist Annie Murphy Paul elaborates on what is happening in our brains when we read in this way.
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Topics:
Reading
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