In the first sentences of her new, highly-acclaimed novel The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt uses the uncommon inwrought to conjure a mood of creepy fairy tale isolation.Continue reading...
The Chicago Manual of Style Online has a monthly Q&A called Shop Talk, and this month Ben Zimmer, executive producer of the Visual Thesaurus and Vocabulary.com, is featured. In the interview, Ben talks about the way that technology is shaping language and how sites like the Visual Thesaurus and Vocabulary.com can engage with "digital natives."Continue reading...
Today marks the 164th anniversary of the death of Edgar Allan Poe. Best known for his spooky tales of the macabre, his anniversary appropriately coincides with a month-long preparation for Halloween. Celebrate by learning Poe's favorite words.Continue reading...
Inspired by a picture we snapped of the Carteret Abattoir in Carteret, NJ, we launched a "You Saw WHAT?! on a Sign? Vocabulary In Signage" contest. Over the last month, we've collected loads of great examples of words like abattoir out in the world, and here we share prize-winning contributions.Continue reading...
"Furlough." "Brinkmanship." "Shutdown." "Slimdown." The political stalemate on Capitol Hill about the federal budget and the Affordable Care Act has generated its own lexicon. Katy Steinmetz has compiled a helpful guide to shutdown buzzwords for TIME's Swampland blog — check it out here.
RIP Tom Clancy. As a tribute, we offer A Tom Clancy Primer, a Vocabulary List of 20 words from Patriot Games and The Hunt for Red October.Continue reading...