Vocabulary.com Blog Contributor
Mark Peters
Mark Peters is a language columnist, lexicographer, and humorist who has written for Esquire, The Funny Times, New Scientist, Psychology Today, Salon, and Slate. He contributes to OUPblog and writes the Best Joke Ever column for McSweeney's. You can read Mark's own jokes on Twitter, such as, "I play by my own rules, which is probably why no one comes to my board game parties anymore."
Star Wars has made many contributions to English, but none more significant that Jedi.
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Word RoutesExploring the pathways of our lexicon
Octlantis: A Word and World With Many Tentacles
And Other Weird, Wonderful Octo- Words
The recent discovery of Octlantis, an undersea community of octopuses just off the eastern coast of Australia, is a reminder of how a novel blend can perfectly name a new phenomenon, no matter how wild or multi-tentacled.
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Black Friday. Small Business Saturday. Cyber Monday. Here's an alternative to the retail frenzy: accumulate some new words. They don't take up any space, and they're free!
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Fortunately, it doesn't take radiation or a distant home planet to learn new words. We're all capable of donning the mantle of Word Person.
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Words like hallow and eldritch aren't as catchy as "trick or treat," but they are part of the colorful history of this popular holiday. Better to learn them now than later: don't take a chance of being haunted by the apparition of a weak vocabulary.
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The lingo of our National Pastime may not strike you as particularly fascinating at first, but dig a little deeper and you'll appreciate how many baseball terms also apply to life in general.
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London's colossal clog is a reminder of the history of berg and its parent word iceberg. With language, there's always a lot going on beneath the surface.
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