Vocabulary.com Blog
Articles from April, 2014
Dept. of Word Lists
A Quick Current Events Quiz: "Balking" & "Reneging" in Middle East Peace Process
Essential words for understanding what's going wrong
Follow news of stalling Middle East negotiations from a vocabularian's perspective by learning 10 words from this week's New York Times new coverage.
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Blog Excerpts
Baseball Lingo, from "Cup of Coffee" to "Southpaw"
With the baseball season underway, the sport's colorful lingo comes to the fore once again. Our own Ben Zimmer talked to KUOW-Seattle about the origins of some baseball terms, like "cup of coffee," "hitterish," and "southpaw." Catch the interview here.
Dept. of Word Lists
"Perks of Being a Wall Flower": Disconnection, Via Vocabulary
Look for vocab-driven impressions the way film critics look at image driven mood
In the same way sightings of fading technologies like typewriters and 45 RMPs in the film adaptation of Perks of Being a Wallflower create an impression of nostalgia and disconnection, so too do sightings of words like smug, regret, stumble, muffle, and paranoia in the language of Stephen Chbosky's novel. Check out these words and more in four new Vocabulary Lists.
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Tips & Tricks
Vocab Blast: One Teacher's One Day Word Learning Challenge
Middle School Students Storm a Vocabulary Hill
A literacy coach set out to storm the Vocabulary.com school leaderboards by herself and ended reaching her goal with an army of middle schoolers at her side, setting off a blaze of word learning excitement at her school.
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Blog Excerpts
Which Word Should Go Into the Next Scrabble Dictionary?
Hasbro, the company that makes Scrabble, is revising the game's official dictionary, and they're letting Scrabble fans pick one of the words to include. Some worthy contenders include zen, ew, and bestie. You can join in the Scrabble Word Showdown on Facebook here, and check out the authoritative take on Hasbro's contest from Stefan Fatsis on Slate here.
Vocabulary Shout-Out
Defining "Empathy"? We Feel Your Pain
And then turn to novelist Leslie Jamison for insight
Leslie Jamison's "cerebral, witty, multichambered essays [that] tend to swing around to one topic in particular: what we mean when we say that we feel someone else's pain." The word for this phenomenon, of course, is empathy, which Jamison explores in a bold and interesting way.
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A few of my female friends have a fun hobby. Not knitting. Not kickboxing. Not baking pies. Not vampire-slaying. Hating Gwyneth Paltrow. I haven't fully grasped my friends' loathing in the past, but I'm beginning to understand, thanks to a humdinger of a euphemism Paltrow used to describe her impending divorce: conscious uncoupling.
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