The editors at Oxford Dictionaries have selected their choice for 2014 Word of the Year, and it is "vape," defined as "to inhale and exhale the vapor produced by an electronic cigarette or similar device." Check out Oxford's announcement here. Our contributor Nancy Friedman was on the case back in 2010, in her column, "But Wait, There's Less!" (Nancy also named "vape" one of her Words of 2013.) Continue reading...
In the latest installment of the Slate podcast "Lexicon Valley," I presented the hosts Mike Vuolo and Bob Garfield with a bit of a mystery. Where did the expression "get one's goat" come from? Theories abound, but hard evidence of the phrase's early use has only recently come to light. Continue reading...
Creative writers, this one's for you! A mood-words graphic that's been making its way around the Internet charts the way 100 words describing various emotional states all boil down to fear, anger, happiness, anger, and disgust. Continue reading...
Welcome to the latest in our series of quick tips on usage and style shared by Mignon Fogarty, better known as Grammar Girl. In this tip, Mignon advises on the usage of toward vs. towards. Continue reading...
As Veterans Day is observed in the United States, a question of military usage continues to pose a puzzle: if "50,000 troops" refers to 50,000 people, then does "one troop" refer to one person? Linguist Neal Whitman looked into the matter on Veterans Day in 2009. Check out his column here. Continue reading...
Verizon offers "Even faster FiOS Quantum Internet" speeds. Duracell has a new Quantum alkaline battery. James Bond had his Quantum of Solace. Any number of companies have "quantum" in their names as well. The implication is that "quantum" is something big and powerful, with a hint of science behind it. Continue reading...
Tech with Kids, a digital magazine founded and edited by USA Today Kid-Tech columnist Jinny Gudmundsen, awarded Vocabulary.com a BEST PICK APP Award and featured the Vocabulary.com app in a review. Continue reading...
It's almost Euphemism of the Year time, and whoa nelly, do I have a contender: sluggish cognitive tempo. As Peter Aldhous notes in Slate, "The name of a 'new attention disorder' sounds like an Onion-style parody. It also sounds like a classic case of disease mongering: blurring normality with sickness to boost drug companies' bottom lines." Continue reading...
Four thousand children in 37 cities and 15 states set a new Guinness World Record for "largest vocabulary lesson" last week, through a vocabulary-focused read aloud organized by PNC's "Grow Up Great" program. But even as educators rally to the "close the word gap" through high profile efforts such as this one, new research shows that the task may not be quite so clear as increasing the sheer number of words children hear. Continue reading...
Teachers around the country have been taking advantage of the Vocabulary.com Educator Edition to track student progress in their classes. And today the Educator Edition got even better, with a brand-new Teacher Dashboard that puts the most useful student data at your fingertips with a great new design. Continue reading...