Vocabulary.com Blog
Articles from December, 2013
Vocabulary Shout-Out
Colson Whitehead on the "Hurly-Burly" of Downtown Vegas
On reduplicative language in Whitehead's rejection of rejection
In "Loving Las Vegas" for Harper's Magazine, Colson Whitehead uses hurly burly when he writes about a summer stint splitting a Let's Go student travel guide assignment among three friends.
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Losing your job is scary. It raises many frightening questions. Can you find another job? How will you pay the bills in the meantime? Where will you get health insurance? Most importantly, what tacky and ridiculous euphemism will mask your firing so a corporate supervillain can sleep at night?
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Dept. of Word Lists
Bad Debts and Low Wages in This Week's News: Ten Words You Need to Know
From "arrears" to "bankruptcy" to "fiscal" as in "cliff"
With Black Friday sales lower than last year, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journalare writing about our nation's increasing poverty via stories on debts we can't pay and demands from low-wage earners for more. Learn ten words drawn from these stories here.
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Words can be thought of as historical artifacts; they carry with them a stamp of time and place, and sometimes it's important to take the long view and think about words outside their immediate context and use a broader perspective.
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Dept. of Word Lists
Anderson's "Speak" Vocab: Not All Context is Created Equal
Not all context examples are created equal
We've selected a set of vocabulary lists drawn from Laurie Halse Anderson's classic young adult novel Speak as our List of the Week, and we urge you to look specifically at the context examples. Not all context examples are created equal, but Anderson's are special. Here's why.
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In case you haven't heard, today is "Cyber Monday," the day that retailers have decided we should all be flocking to make online purchases for our holiday gift list. Last year, Ben Zimmer explained how the advent of "Black Friday" led to the branding of "Cyber Monday" and other days in the Holy Week of shopping.
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