Vocabulary.com Blog
Articles from 2014
Bare means naked, but to bear is to carry something. A bear is also a brown furry animal, but most people keep that one straight.
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People often use the word bemuse when they mean amuse, but to amuse is to entertain, and to bemuse is to confuse. In Alice in Wonderland, the White Rabbit amuses Alice as he frolics, but then the Cheshire Cat bemuses her when he tells her to go two directions at once.
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From the annual meeting of the American Copy Editors Society in Las Vegas comes some earth-shaking news: the folks who edit the Associated Press Stylebook have loosened the distinction between "over" and "more than." The stylebook editors announced that they are now fine with "over" being used with numbers. Many of those in attendance were aghast, while others hailed the change as long overdue.
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Voracious describes someone super hungry, like a zombie or a wolf. A voracious appetite makes you want to eat a whole cake. Veracious (with an "e") means truthful, as in a veracious first president who cannot tell a lie.
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Dept. of Word Lists
It's National Reading Month... But Don't Worry!
If you've got nine minutes, Time's Katy Steinmetz has nine reading suggestions for you
For National Reading Month, Time's Katy Steinmetz gives us "9 Great Things to Read in (Roughly) 9 Minutes," a column devoted to reading in contexts other than great books of the "big, blubbery" Moby Dick variety.
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App Launches at #1, Thanks to Vocabularians Everywhere
Reviewers call it an addiction you can feel good about
Vocabulary.com for iPad and iPhone hit the #1 spot in the educational app category a day after launch, and reviewers agree. Move over, Candy Crush. Vocabulary.com is a crazy fun addiction you can feel good about.
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Behind the DictionaryLexicographers Talk About Language
Is Your Bestie Sciencey? Celebrating the Cutesiest Suffix
The Oxford English Dictionary's recent quarterly update added, as usual, as assortment of terms from all over the map. These included ethnomathematics, honky-tonker, honor code, exfoliator, bookaholic, over-under, wackadoo, and the even wackier wackadoodle. But the entry that really caught my eye was bestie, an affectionate term for a best friend.
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