Vocabulary.com Blog
Articles from 2014
Under the HoodThe science of vocabulary building
New Study Shows We Learn Best When We First Fail
And word learning on Vocabulary.com is based on this idea
In a piece in The New York Times Magazine's recent education issue with the provocative headline "Why Flunking Exams is Actually a Good Thing," science reporter Benedict Carey delves into the science of pretesting (or using testing as a way to study and learn), an idea that suggests that failing to answer a test question correctly is one of the best ways to stimulate our brains to learn.
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Stroll through the hipper districts of any American city in 2014 and you may experience the sense of time being slightly out of joint. On shop signs and menus, words that last flourished a couple of centuries ago—or earlier—have been making a comeback. But no word from the distant past is as antique, or as popular in commerce in so many disparate ways, as apothecary.
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Announcements
New Profile Pages Put Every School on the Vocab Map
You don't have to be winning the leaderboard to see your progress learning learning words.
In conjunction with the kick-off of our yearlong Vocabulary Bowl, we've created school profile pages to recognize word-learning progress at every school actively playing. Now, any school competing in the Bowl can see their name up in lights.
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Tasty MorselsGood stuff from Vocabulary.com
A Novelist Breaks Her Own "100-Dollar Word" Rule
National Book Award nominee Karen Joy Fowler on building a character with a larger vocabulary than her own
Karen Joy Fowler's PEN/Faulkner Award-winning novel We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves (now shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize as well) is narrated by a character with an outsize vocabulary. Here, Fowler speaks with Vocabulary.com about the process of finding the words to create that character and the fun of breaking the rule, "Never use a 100-dollar word when a one-dollar word will do."
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Announcements
Academic Study Proves Vocabulary.com Method Works
Eleventh graders boost engagement and learning in school and at home.
A team of academic literacy researchers put Vocabulary.com to the test in a study of eleventh grade students using Vocabulary.com in classroom and after-school contexts along with other vocabulary-focused digital learning tools. The results, published in the prestigious, peer-reviewed Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, are unequivocal: Vocabulary.com boosts learning by creating a fun, engaging, and competitive experience where students are in control.
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It's time for the latest in our series of quick tips on usage and style shared by Mignon Fogarty, better known as Grammar Girl. Here Mignon tackles the question of whether the past-tense form of shine should be shined or shone.
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I've spent 81.7% of my life watching Seinfeld, but I just realized I never mentioned a Seinfeldian euphemism in one of my columns. Bagel technician, meaning someone who makes bagels, is the preposterous title on Kramer's business card during "The Strike" episode, which is better known for launching the holiday Festivus.
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