Vocabulary.com Blog
Articles from 2014
Last year for Thanksgiving, I did something gastronomically delicious but linguistically impossible: I dry-brined my turkey. The very word brine implies water. Tons of seafaring stories reference the briny deep as a euphemism for the salty sea. So what could a dry-brine possibly be?
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Let's Talk Turkey: A Word That's Waddled Round the Globe
An excerpt from Dan Jurafsky's "The Language of Food"
Although turkeys were domesticated by Native Americans, turkey itself is not a Native American word. In this excerpt from a new book The Language of Food, linguist and Stanford University professor Dan Jurafsky charts the complicated path the word turkey followed into English, then serves up a slice of etymological pecan pie.
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Recently we announced a powerful new Teacher Dashboard that gives educators a comprehensive look at exactly how their students are doing in their progress toward vocabulary mastery. Now administrators have a dashboard of their own, with the ability to see how Vocabulary.com is helping teachers and students, allowing them to recognize the efforts of their school's top performers.
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Beyond "Maize": Thanksgiving Vocab for Grown-Ups
What some call food-word confusion, others consider a cornucopia of words!
There are many things we can all love about Thanksgiving, but word confusion is not one of them. That's why, as food talk get increasingly hysterical at this time of year, and recipe words blur before our eyes, we bring you clarity. Or, for those of us who find a profusion of new and abundant vocabulary as welcome as the pilgrims found the assistance provided by Native Americans, call it a cornucopia of delight!
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Tasty MorselsGood stuff from Vocabulary.com
"Nice" or "Not Nice": Which are You?
A vocabularian's personality quiz
Before the highly overused nice slips off your tongue one more time, check out some more specific options at your disposal.
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The old adage about American and England being "two nations divided by a common language" — wrongly attributed to George Bernard Shaw, who never said or wrote it — may still hold true in some quarters. But in the language of U.S. commerce, it's fast losing its relevance. Terms that once seemed quaintly Olde English to Americans — from "bespoke" to "stockist" — are fast becoming the new normal.
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Tasty MorselsGood stuff from Vocabulary.com
Don't Mess with Texas: Bellaire High Wins Leaderboard
In the Vocabulary Bowl, Bellaire is the school to beat.
Bellaire High School in Bellaire, TX won the school leaderboard banner for October, competing not only against schools across the country, but also with two schools in their own back yard. What does this prove to fans of our yearlong Vocabulary Bowl? Don't mess with Texas.
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