Vocabulary.com Blog
Articles from 2013
Tasty MorselsGood stuff from Vocabulary.com
"You Saw WHAT on a Sign?!" Contest Results
A collection of vocabulary in the wild
Inspired by a picture we snapped of the Carteret Abattoir in Carteret, NJ, we launched a "You Saw WHAT?! on a Sign? Vocabulary In Signage" contest. Over the last month, we've collected loads of great examples of words like abattoir out in the world, and here we share prize-winning contributions.
Continue reading...
Blog Excerpts
Know Your Shutdown Buzzwords
"Furlough." "Brinkmanship." "Shutdown." "Slimdown." The political stalemate on Capitol Hill about the federal budget and the Affordable Care Act has generated its own lexicon. Katy Steinmetz has compiled a helpful guide to shutdown buzzwords for TIME's Swampland blog — check it out here.
Dept. of Word Lists
The Words That Made the Man: Tom Clancy
Adrenaline-Producing Language Inside the Mind of a Fighting Man
RIP Tom Clancy. As a tribute, we offer A Tom Clancy Primer, a Vocabulary List of 20 words from Patriot Games and The Hunt for Red October.
Continue reading...
Tasty MorselsGood stuff from Vocabulary.com
A Conversation on Human Rights...Via a Vocabulary List
Vocabulary.com Contributes to New York Times Learning Network Blog Post
Vocabulary.com shared the story of a single Vocabulary List sparking an international conversation on human rights, as a contribution to the New York Times Learning Network blog.
Continue reading...
Just as a biologist can tell a critter from a creepy-crawly by the number of legs, euphemism enthusiasts can tell a 5-alarm, major-league, restaurant-quality euphemism by the presence of three words. Readers of previous columns may remember terms such as employee dialogue session, strategic dynamism effort, enhanced pension offer, life problem issue, taco meat filling, and customer pain point. Every time, three words = three metric tons of malarkey.
Continue reading...
Dept. of Word Lists
An "Unconscionable" "Impasse"? Ten Words in the News that You Need to Know
Get confident with vocabulary from headline news!
With Congress stalemated, find out where that word comes from. Then learn nine other words from this week's headline news!
Continue reading...
How speakers introduce additions to the language that then gain circulation is difficult to document: even today in the Internet age, tracing the origins of linguistic innovation is a sleuth's game and it's a subject that intrigues linguists. Now researchers are trying to bring more light to the process by which people create, learn and use new words.
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.