Vocabulary.com Blog
Articles from 2010
Wow! What a response my last column received. Any time The Washington Post excerpts your work, you know you're on to something. My thoughts on teaching vocabulary out of literary context struck a chord with many readers, and I thought it would be beneficial for all if I answered a few questions and shared a few further thoughts this month.
Continue reading...
Stan Carey, a professional editor from Ireland, writes entertainingly about the English language on his blog Sentence First. Here Stan muses on the word "kill" and a special meaning it has in the colloquial English speech of Ireland.
Continue reading...
I listen to a lot of NPR. Unless the correspondent is doing a "man in the street"-type interview, the subjects generally appear intelligent, educated and literate. At least they used to. I've heard several malapropisms in recent weeks, some of which are so common that I figure it's time I spoke up.
Continue reading...
Blog Excerpts
Improve Your Iteracy Literacy
As its "Cool News of the Day," Reveries Magazine has featured the latest New York Times "On Language" column by Visual Thesaurus editor Ben Zimmer on "the iteracy afflicting Facebook, Google and others." Read more here (and read here for a previous "Cool News of the Day" tied to Zimmer's column on etymythology).
Wendalyn Nichols, editor of the Copyediting newsletter, offers useful tips to copy editors and anyone else who prizes clear and orderly writing. Here she tackles the question of how plural pants got transformed into singular pant.
Continue reading...
A recent trip to an amusement park with his sons Doug and Adam got linguist Neal Whitman thinking about the evolution of the word awesome, and how it took such a different historical turn from its sibling awful.
Continue reading...
Blog Excerpts
Most Looked-Up Words in the Times, 2010
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.