Maria C. of Jersey City, NJ writes in with today's Mailbag Friday question: "My coworker always uses the word reticent when he really means reluctant. Isn't he using the wrong word?"
Continue reading...
Yesterday, writing teacher Margaret Hundley Parker offered a delightful lesson on the perils of learning grammar from rock and roll lyrics. Among the grammatical malefactors are Bob Dylan, whose song "Lay, Lady, Lay" uses the verb lay in an intransitive fashion instead of lie. Likewise, Dylan sang "If not for you, babe, I'd lay awake all night," and "I wanna lay right down and die." But he should get points for using lay in the transitive too, as in: "Lay down your weary tune," or using lay as the proper past-tense form of lie: "I spied an old hobo, in a doorway he lay." Still, if the foremost bard of American popular music can't be consistent on this point, what hope is there for the rest of us?
Continue reading...
As the recession worsens, we're all learning far more than we ever wanted to know about the ins and outs of the banking industry, ground zero of the financial meltdown. And we're learning new lingo too: the news these days brings word of good banks, bad banks, zombie banks, and even banksters.
Continue reading...
Last month a usage dispute broke out in the comments section here on the Visual Thesaurus. Our "Evasive Maneuvers" columnist Mark Peters described a friend who "started feeling nauseous." Two commenters objected to this use of nauseous, saying that the word properly describes someone or something that is sickening, and that the word Mark should have used is nauseated. Who's right?
Continue reading...
With this year's American Crossword Puzzle Tournament just around the corner, there is no better time to consider that peculiar, vowel-heavy brand of English known as "crosswordese." Think you're a first-rate cruciverbalist? Quick: can you tell an anoa from an unau?
Continue reading...
Every writer knows the feeling: you've just released a carefully edited piece of prose into circulation, and when you take another look you cringe at the sight of a typo that you missed. With online writing, typos can very often be fixed without anyone even noticing. Printed errors usually require red-faced corrections. But don't feel too bad: imagine if your typos were etched in granite for all to see!
Continue reading...
Today marks the bicentennial of two of the most influential minds of the modern age: Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin. Besides sharing a birthday, Lincoln and Darwin also shared an eloquence with the English language, despite the very different prose styles of their work. In a new book, Angels and Ages, Adam Gopnik argues that this shared eloquence allowed them to impart their world-changing visions. But what about on a more basic level, that of the individual word? What lasting contributions did Lincoln and Darwin make to the English lexicon?
Continue reading...
Sign up now (it’s free!)
Whether you’re a teacher or a learner,
Vocabulary.com can put you or your class
on the path to systematic vocabulary improvement.