Vocabulary.com Blog
Articles from 2014
Blog Excerpts
Scrabble Showdown: "Zen" Versus... "Geocache"?
In Hasbro's "Scrabble Word Showdown," fans of the game have been narrowing down candidates for a new word to include the game's soon-to-be-revised official dictionary. Two finalists are left standing: zen (which many Scrabblers have been requesting), and... geocache, the recipient of a big get-out-the-vote effort by fans of the high-tech treasure hunt known as "geocaching." See the latest from Hasbro here, and read Caitlin Dewey's take in the Washington Post here. Update: And the winner is... geocache!
Announcements
Bloomberg TV's Pimm Fox Takes the Vocabulary.com Challenge
Executive Producer Ben Zimmer quizzes Pimm on some tricky words
In a segment that aired last night on Bloomberg TV, Vocabulary.com executive producer and lexicographer Ben Zimmer appeared on Pimm Fox's "Taking Stock" on Bloomberg TV, describing the adaptive learning power of Vocabulary.com and the Vocabulary.com App, and quizzing Pimm on some of the some super-challenging vocabulary players with advanced vocabularies might encounter.
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Vocabulary.com News
When I was studying Spanish and had gotten to the point where our assignments consisted of reading real books, I kept a well-thumbed dictionary on my desk. Every paragraph seemed to contain several words that I had to look up, which was tedious and slow. Our wise teacher kept telling us that we didn't need to do that—you don't actually have to know what every word means to understand the text.
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Dept. of Word Lists
A Quick Current Events Quiz: "Balking" & "Reneging" in Middle East Peace Process
Essential words for understanding what's going wrong
Follow news of stalling Middle East negotiations from a vocabularian's perspective by learning 10 words from this week's New York Times new coverage.
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Blog Excerpts
Baseball Lingo, from "Cup of Coffee" to "Southpaw"
With the baseball season underway, the sport's colorful lingo comes to the fore once again. Our own Ben Zimmer talked to KUOW-Seattle about the origins of some baseball terms, like "cup of coffee," "hitterish," and "southpaw." Catch the interview here.
Dept. of Word Lists
"Perks of Being a Wall Flower": Disconnection, Via Vocabulary
Look for vocab-driven impressions the way film critics look at image driven mood
In the same way sightings of fading technologies like typewriters and 45 RMPs in the film adaptation of Perks of Being a Wallflower create an impression of nostalgia and disconnection, so too do sightings of words like smug, regret, stumble, muffle, and paranoia in the language of Stephen Chbosky's novel. Check out these words and more in four new Vocabulary Lists.
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Tips & Tricks
Vocab Blast: One Teacher's One Day Word Learning Challenge
Middle School Students Storm a Vocabulary Hill
A literacy coach set out to storm the Vocabulary.com school leaderboards by herself and ended reaching her goal with an army of middle schoolers at her side, setting off a blaze of word learning excitement at her school.
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