Vocabulary.com Blog
Articles about Word Origins
In the American West, wildfires have become both more frequent and more destructive. With this ominous shift has come a new vocabulary for describing fire and its outcome – and new attention to some of the oldest words in our language.
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You're familiar with canine and feline, but there's a marvelous menagerie of animal adjectives (Anserine! Piscine! Vulpine!) that we don't want to wind up on the endangered vocab list and disappear forever. So do your part: learn them and use them, either literally or metaphorically.
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Word RoutesExploring the pathways of our lexicon
By the Light of the Moonmoon: The Joy of Reduplication
These days we need all the levity, lunar or otherwise, that we can get. This lexical lunacy is a flimsy excuse for me to write about my favorite type of word: the reduplication. From ack-ack to zip-zap, reduplicative words are silly, childish, catchy, animalistic, nonsensical, and awesome.
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These chaos-describing words have, for the most part, a violent pedigree. Today's "ruckus" was likely a deadly event in the days of yore. We dive into a disorderly group of words that are appropriate for discussing both petty and primordial pandemonium.
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Word RoutesExploring the pathways of our lexicon
Mulligan Day is Do-over Day
The Lingo of the Second Chance
We like the idea of giving someone another shot so much that we thought we'd explore the language of getting things right.
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We all make mistakes, big and little, and there's a large vocabulary of adjectives for when you messed up and you know it. Here's your chance to atone for your shameful vocabulary.
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As long as there's a literal Constitution to amend and a metaphorical constitution to defend, constitution will remain an important word. Here's a look at this versatile word, just in time for September 17th — Constitution Day.
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