Articles from 2008

Two years ago, the International Astronomical Union voted to demote Pluto from planetary status, deciding that it was only a "dwarf planet." There was great uproar among fans of Pluto, even spawning a group calling themselves The Society for the Preservation of Pluto as a Planet. The IAU held firm to its decision, though, and moved on to other nomenclatural issues. A term was needed to encompass Pluto and all Pluto-like objects on the fringes of the solar system out beyond Neptune. This week the IAU finally came up with an official term: plutoid. It's not the prettiest word, but it does the trick. Continue reading...

Topics: Vocabulary Words Word Origins

Hillary Clinton suspended her presidential campaign over the weekend, allowing Barack Obama to claim the mantle of "presumptive nominee" for the Democratic Party. Of course, many in the media had already bestowed that title on Obama the previous Tuesday, after the vaunted "superdelegates" gave him an insurmountable lead in the delegate count. John McCain achieved the same feat on the Republican side back in early February when Mitt Romney pulled out of the race, though it took another month for Mike Huckabee to withdraw and seal the deal on McCain's "presumptive" status. It's a word we hear every election cycle, but Word Routes reader Courtney S. asks, where does it come from? Continue reading...

Topics: Vocabulary Word Origins Politics Words

This past week saw Barack Obama clinch the Democratic presidential nomination, with the commitments of undecided "superdelegates" putting him over the top. Even though the term superdelegate has been kicking around Democratic circles since 1981, the word has achieved new prominence this year, when all eyes were on these unpledged party leaders to break the primary deadlock between Obama and Hillary Clinton. We're less than halfway through 2008, but superdelegate has already emerged as a formidable candidate for Word of the Year. Continue reading...

Topics: Vocabulary Word Origins Politics Words

A hearty congratulations from all of us here at the Visual Thesaurus to Sameer Mishra, winner of the 2008 Scripps National Spelling Bee! Sameer, a 13-year-old from West Lafayette, Indiana, triumphed over his competitors by correctly spelling a very fitting word in the final round: guerdon, meaning "reward or payment." His reward was $35,000 in cash and various other prizes. The second-place finisher, Sidharth Chand of Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, performed admirably on words like introuvable ("impossible to find"), but he eventually erred in spelling prosopopoeia, a personifying figure of speech. Continue reading...

Topics: Vocabulary Word Origins Fun Words Spelling

This month in the Lounge we've been having a think about whether it's a hack to turn a verb into a noun. Here's our take on it. Continue reading...

Topics: Vocabulary Language Words

The annual Scripps National Spelling Bee kicks off today, and every year there seems to be more and more public attention paid to this preeminent spectacle of word-nerdery. As in the past two years, tomorrow's semifinal and final rounds are being broadcast live on national television (semifinals on ESPN from 11 am to 2 pm, finals on ABC from 8 to 10 pm). It's always exciting to see middle-schoolers battle it out for the spelling crown, in a competition rife with dramatic "thrill of victory" and "agony of defeat" moments (most memorably depicted in the suspenseful documentary Spellbound). Adults can only marvel at the preternatural abilities of the young finalists to spell super-obscure words that most of us have seldom — if ever — come across. Where do they get those words, anyway? Continue reading...

Topics: Vocabulary Fun Words Spelling

In the United Kingdom, the "nice decade" is over. When Bank of England governor Mervyn King announced recently that "the nice decade is behind us," he didn't mean that British pleasantness was at an end. Rather, he was using an acronym, NICE, which stands for "Non-Inflationary Consistent Expansion," a condition that King says has characterized the last ten years of British economic prosperity. One economist says the country is now heading into VILE years, playing off NICE with his own readymade acronym for "Volatile Inflation, Less Expansionary," while another says things are going to be EVIL ("Exacting period of Volatile Inflation and Low growth").

BBC News greets the end of the NICE decade with the question, "What's the point of niceness?" Was the acronym an appropriate one to label Britain's sustained economic boom, or is nice just too... nice? Continue reading...

Topics: Vocabulary Word Origins Words Usage

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Pluto: Once a Planet, Now Merely a Plutoid

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The Presumptive Nominee, I Presume?

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The Year of the "Superdelegate"

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A Big "Guerdon" for Spelling Bee Champ

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Mighty Morphin' Parts of Speech

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It's Spelling Bee Time Again!

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How Nice is "Nice"?

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