Vocabulary.com Blog
Articles from 2015
Recently we were able to interview Jessica Conrad, a speech language pathologist and technology integration specialist with the Johnson County and Surrounding Schools district in Franklin, IN, who had just reviewed Vocabulary.com for her district website. Her review had highlighted a feature that might not jump out at you at first: hints.
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How do you get kids, especially younger ones, aware of the importance of word learning? Through stories, of course. And there's no better place to start than with Debra Frasier's award-winning classic Miss Alaineus: A Vocabulary Disaster.
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For the latest installment of the Slate podcast Lexicon Valley, I take a look at the peculiar history of the word pumpernickel — a kind of German bread with an origin that turns out to be downright devilish.
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In The Atlantic, Peter Beinhart called out a euphemism that was somehow common and under-the-radar at the same time: "Newspaper editors, lend me your ears: Please, never allow the phrase 'muscular foreign policy' to blight your pages again."
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If you play Vocabulary.com, you know you can rack up all sorts of achievements as you learn words. But why should individual players have all the fun? Starting today, schools in the U.S. and Canada are awarded achievements at the end of every month based on student play. Not only that, we're introducing leaderboards that allow students to see how their school measures up against others in their state.
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As keynote speaker at the 2015 American Copy Editors Society meeting, lexicographer Ben Zimmer showed off the resources in the Vocabulary.com Dictionary as part of a talk on "Nitpickery, Debunkage, and the Joys of Getting It Right." Not surprisingly, ACES attendees live-tweeting the address were more likely to take note of Zimmer's singing, rapping, and discussion of language anachronisms in "Mad Men" and "Downton Abbey."
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Word RoutesExploring the pathways of our lexicon
A Heart-Stopping Finish in the 2015 Crossword Showdown
At the 2015 American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, it came down to a neck-and-neck battle between Dan Feyer and Tyler Hinman, the two titans of speed-solving. And in an absolutely heart-stopping finish, Dan beat Tyler by half a second.
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