Vocabulary.com Blog
Articles from August, 2015
Blog Excerpts
What, Exactly, is U.N.C.L.E.?
Besides a top secret multinational spy agency...it's a backronym. Which means it's right on trend.
The Man from U.N.C.L.E., which appears this weekend in all its thrilling spy story glory, might leave the non-nindoctrinated among us wondering: What does U.N.C.L.E. stand for? And why did the show's creators select that particular word?
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CandlepowerAd and marketing creatives
Beyond Google's Alphabet: Brand Names from the Lingo of Language
Alphabet, Google's new parent company, has generated lots of business buzz this week. But the choice of "Alphabet" for the company's name is equally newsworthy. Not only does it signal a departure from Google's blandly descriptive naming style — Google Plus, Google Maps, Google Mail, and so on — but it also takes an imaginative flight away from geek-speak and toward a universe of names inspired by language and literature.
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The words that and which point to something — which one? That one! Before a clause or phrase, a that clause goes with the flow, but a which clause starts with a pause. American English makes a big deal out of the distinction but British English doesn't, which may be why it's so dang confusing.
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You're is short for "you are" and your shows ownership. If you're getting them mixed up, your secret is safe with us. Better yet, here's help! It's your secret. And now you're about to know more. See?
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Under the HoodThe science of vocabulary building
A Neuropsychologist Suggests Tech Can Close the 30 Million Word Gap
For students falling ever further behind, technology can move as fast as they need to go.
In an opinion piece in Education Week, research neuropsychologist Steven L. Miller argued that education technology should be used to close "30 million word gap." Its ability to personalize learning makes it faster than anything a teacher can do in a classroom, and with the gap ever-widening, speed is key.
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Dept. of Word Lists
Our Word's-Eye View of the First GOP Debate
Corpus-based analysis highlights the candidates' most relevant words
In a rapid-response survey of candidates' vocabulary in the first GOP debate, broadcast last night on Fox News, Vocabulary.com analyzed the transcript to identify each candidate's most relevant vocabulary word. And the data-driven approach yielded some interesting results about the candidates' language use.
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Blog Excerpts
How Hard is it to Conquer Scrabble in Another Language?
A) Very. B) Depends on inflections. C) Both.
When English-language Scrabble champ Nigel Richards, who does not speak French, won a French-language Scrabble championship, analysts rushed to analyze how much memorization that actually entailed. Ben Zimmer explains that to get a full understanding of Richards' achievement, a simple counting of words in the dictionary only gives a partial picture.
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