Among the new words just added to Oxford Dictionaries is "YOLO," an acronym for "You Only Live Once." Loyal readers will recall that our own Ben Zimmer has been on the YOLO beat for a couple of years. Read his August 2012 Word Routes column, "Further Adventures of YOLO," here, and read about how his Boston Globe column helped put the word on the map here. Continue reading...
Deadspin reports this week on White Sox pitcher Chris Sale's personal vocabulary challenge: "After nearly every start this season...Sale has met a specific objective: Incorporate a predetermined word into his postgame conference." Continue reading...
Recently a math teacher and Facebook friend of Vocabulary.com posted to her Facebook page: Would you rather take a "quiz," "diagnostic," "test," or "evaluation?" Responses to the post were clear. Everyone would rather take a quiz. A quick look at the blurbs for these words on the Vocabulary.com website explains why. Continue reading...
Like has a new meaning. The word used to mean 'feel affection for,' 'take pleasure in,' or 'enjoy.' Now, thanks to Facebook, like can also mean, "Yes, I read what you wrote," or just a noncommittal "uh huh." Continue reading...
Here is the latest in a series of tips on usage and style shared by Mignon Fogarty, better known as Grammar Girl. One of Mignon's correspondents inquires about when setup should appear as a single, unbroken word, and when there should be a space or a hyphen between set and up. Continue reading...
In a review for the New York Times Sunday Book Review of Karen Joy Fowler's "readably juicy and surreptitiously smart" We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, Barbara Kingsolver describes the novel as "a story of Everyfamily in which loss engraves relationships, truth is a soulful stalker and coming-of-age means facing down the mirror, recognizing the shape-shifting notion of self." She might have added that it is an excellent read for anyone interested in words. Continue reading...
The new edition of the official Scrabble dictionary is being released, and with it come 5,000 new words that North American players will be able to make with their tiles. There are helpful two-letter words like DA, GI, PO, and TE, but perhaps most interesting are such oddities as QAJAQ and QUINZHEE. It turns out those are both Inuit words, included because the Canadian Oxford Dictionary is one of the sources. Read all about it in the National Post here. Continue reading...
We have another Euphemism of the Year candidate—and perhaps an entirely new category. In reference to her impending divorce, singer Jewel called the event a tender undoing, apparently seeking to create a more gibberish-soaked term than conscious uncoupling, which Gwyneth Paltrow famously used to describe her own divorce. Continue reading...
In a piece for Politico, former member of the U.S. House of Representatives Steve LaTourette cited the Vocabulary.com blurb for grifter when he used that term to describe an arm of the Republican party. Politics aside, grifter is a great word and we're glad to see it getting some play. Continue reading...