Vocabulary.com Blog
Articles from November, 2014
Word CountWriters Talk About Writing
How Did "Quantum" Come to Mean "Really Big"?
That sense of its meaning is actually fairly new.
Verizon offers "Even faster FiOS Quantum Internet" speeds. Duracell has a new Quantum alkaline battery. James Bond had his Quantum of Solace. Any number of companies have "quantum" in their names as well. The implication is that "quantum" is something big and powerful, with a hint of science behind it.
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Blog Excerpts
"Tech with Kids" Gives Vocabulary.com "Best Pick" Award
Accompanying review calls game "great for would-be word wizards"
Tech with Kids, a digital magazine founded and edited by USA Today Kid-Tech columnist Jinny Gudmundsen, awarded Vocabulary.com a BEST PICK APP Award and featured the Vocabulary.com app in a review.
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It's almost Euphemism of the Year time, and whoa nelly, do I have a contender: sluggish cognitive tempo. As Peter Aldhous notes in Slate, "The name of a 'new attention disorder' sounds like an Onion-style parody. It also sounds like a classic case of disease mongering: blurring normality with sickness to boost drug companies' bottom lines."
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Topics:
Fun
Under the HoodThe science of vocabulary building
A New Guinness Record: "Largest Vocabulary Lesson"
Preschoolers break the record in a language-focused read aloud
Four thousand children in 37 cities and 15 states set a new Guinness World Record for "largest vocabulary lesson" last week, through a vocabulary-focused read aloud organized by PNC's "Grow Up Great" program. But even as educators rally to the "close the word gap" through high profile efforts such as this one, new research shows that the task may not be quite so clear as increasing the sheer number of words children hear.
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