Vocabulary.com Blog
Articles from July, 2015
While the mullet haircut takes us back in time, the word itself should not. Mullet was coined in the 1300s to refer to fish; the word's earliest use as a hairstyle name did not appear in print until 1994, when the Beastie Boys' "Mullet" "had a little story to tell/About a hair style that's way of life."
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Behind the DictionaryLexicographers Talk About Language
A Real Go-Setter
Why does "Go Set A Watchman" lead off with two verbs?
This week's publication of Go Set a Watchman, Harper Lee's long-dormant sequel of sorts to To Kill a Mockingbird, has gotten a tune running through my head: "Go Tell Aunt Rhody." Two titles, same number of syllables, and the same syntactic structure, right down to the use of go plus another verb right next to it. But how do both those verbs fit into the place where just one verb should go?
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Knock knock. Who's there? It's an apostrophe telling you that who's is short for "who is." Whose silly idea was it to make these words sound alike? Who knows? But whose shows possession and who's is a contraction.
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It's a bird! It's a plane! It's is short for "it is"! But its simply owns something — it's soooo possessive. Its is the possessive form of "it."
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Behind the DictionaryLexicographers Talk About Language
Linguistic "Humdingers" for Sticky Situations
What sounds do you make when words fail? A garbled stutter? A whistle? Or is there just the resounding bump of your jaw hitting the floor? Turns out, there are words to capture the wordless shock we experience when we're confronted by mess, noise, violence, or otherwise sticky situations. They're linked by sound: repeated syllables and long vowels that are onomatopoeically evocative of the sounds that come out of our mouths when our brains are overwhelmed.
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On July 25, the fourteenth Summer Special Olympics World Games will open in Los Angeles. Over the next seven days, 7,000 athletes will compete in sporting events at venues around the city, supported by 30,000 volunteers and cheered by 500,000 spectators. ESPN will broadcast the opening ceremony. It sounds festive. It sounds inspiring. But what makes it "special"?
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Dept. of Word Lists
Some "Jazzy" Words and "Jazz" History
Just in time for the centennial of the word's first musical use.
July 11, 2015 marks the 100th anniversary of the first musical use of the word jazz. To celebrate, we've put together a list of vocabulary from quotes about what Jazz is as an art form and what it has meant in the lives of those quoted, as well as links to the story of jazz's origin.
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