Vocabulary.com Blog
Articles from November, 2013
While Americans this week have marked the sad anniversary of John F. Kennedy's assassination, there is a more pleasant commemoration going on as well. On Nov. 23, 1963, the day after Kennedy died, the BBC first broadcast the science-fiction series "Doctor Who." The franchise is still going strong 50 years later. To celebrate, let's look at one of the lexical contributions of "Doctor Who": the name for the nefarious alien race, "Dalek."
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Tasty MorselsGood stuff from Vocabulary.com
ELL Teacher Calls Vocabulary.com Her "Favorite"
Praises it's depth and flexibility
In a review of Vocabulary.com University of Michigan Professor Pamela Bogart can't decide whether to call the site "a dictionary with witty definitions," "an advanced vocabulary game," "a massive database of real examples," or "useful wordlists you can bookmark & learn." Finally she settles on "my favorite vocabulary & dictionary site/game," a title we're happy to accept!
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Vocabulary Shout-Out
National Book Award Winner James McBride Resuscitates "Four-Flusher"
A keen attention to historical detail, even in words
James McBride's novel The Good Lord Bird, a retelling of the John Brown story through the eyes of a young, escaped slave boy passing as a girl was billed by The New York Times as "a brilliant romp of a novel," and awarded the National Book Award last night. But how does it hold up from a vocabularian's perspective? Pretty well, it turns out. Right there in the opening passage, we encountered a word that sent us to the Dictionary: the rich and rare four-flusher.
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Dept. of Word Lists
Vocabulary Lists for the National Book Award Nominees
Learn words from master writers
With National Book Awards winners announced tonight, check out free, interactive lists celebrating these master writers' words.
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Oxford Dictionaries has named selfie its Word of the Year, bringing a great deal of attention to the trendy word. As it turns out, this social-media-friendly term for a photograph of oneself first cropped up in Australia, where the "-ie" ending is often used to form new words.
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Dept. of Word Lists
On a Mayor's "Rampages" and Bank's "Accountability": Ten Words In the News You Need to Know
Stories of Diplomacy and Corruption Abound
To fully understand this week's unfolding news stories, learn "Ten Words in the News You Need to Know," taken from New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Miami Herald coverage.
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Blog Excerpts
"Selfie" Wins as Oxford's Word of the Year
The word selfie, defined as "a photograph that one has taken of oneself," took over social media this year, so it's no surprise that it has also been named as Word of the Year by Oxford Dictionaries. Selfie beat out other contenders like bitcoin, binge-watch, and of course, twerk. Read the full announcement from Oxford University Press here.
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