Vocabulary.com Blog
Articles from 2015
We love dramatic vocabulary moments in film and fiction, like this one in Veronica Roth's Insurgent, the second novel in the Divergent series, and we can only hope this dramatic introduction of the definition of insurgent (complete with part of speech!) it will make it into the Insurgent movie, coming to theaters this week.
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Topics:
Vocabulary
When the Academy Awards were given out last month, entertainment news was full of commentary about which movies, directors and performers should have been nominated but weren't—who got snubbed by those snobs in the Academy. That made me wonder if snub and snob were etymologically related.
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In a recent post on his LinkedIn blog, Emotional Intelligence 2.0 co-author Dr. Travis Bradberry listed some of the factors that contribute to EQ, or emotional intelligence. What's at the top of the list of factors indicating you might have high EQ? "You Have a Robust Emotional Vocabulary," Dr. Bradberry writes.
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Topics:
Vocabulary
They could have called it a dustup. A run-in. Fisticuffs. A kerfuffle. (Or even the sequipedalian batrachomyomachia.) But the BBC chose to use fracas in describing the event that led to the the suspension of Top Gear host Jeremy Clarkson, sending many of us to our dictionaries with the question, "What does that mean?"
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On the latest installment of Slate's podcast Lexicon Valley, I look at the roots of the festive word carnival, associated with pre-Lenten celebrations around the Christian world. Some scholars speculate that the true origins of carnival actually lie in pagan rituals predating Christianity.
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A new study of how word learning lights up reward centers in the brain shows that word learning makes us as happy as taking drugs or eating great food. It also helps to explain why our vocabulary game is so much fun.
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To celebrate National Grammar Day today ("March Fourth/Forth"), the American Copy Editing Society's announced winning entries in a grammar haiku contest. Check them out and survey all the entries here.
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