Mignon Fogarty, better known as her alter ego Grammar Girl, has been sharing a series of short tips on usage and style. In her latest installment, she explains why the plural of the word ox is oxen instead of oxes. Continue reading...
When you play Vocabulary.com, you'll see a wide variety of question types quizzing you on the meanings of words. But so far, the questions have been entirely text-based, relying on definitions, synonyms, antonyms, and example sentences. Today we are pleased to announce a brand-new type of question that takes advantage of the visual potential of vocabulary learning. Continue reading...
When you visit your bank's website or enter a credit-card number, you've probably noticed that in the browser's address box, the URL begins with https. The "S" stands for "secure," and the security technology your browser uses for that "S" represents one of the great inventions in the history of secrets. In this piece I'll walk you through some of the terms of that rich field. Continue reading...
One of the students in my Fiction Writing Workshop told a classmate to take a red pen and cross out the multitude of adverbs he had strewn throughout his story. The rest of the class nodded their heads in agreement. But just before I could move us on to the next item on the agenda, the author asked the young woman who'd spoken up, "But why? Why can't I use adverbs?" Continue reading...
Weird Al Yankovic's "Word Crimes" video transforms Robin Thicke's scandalous "Blurred Lines" into a prescriptivist grammarian's screed. We think it's brilliant and are happy to see it getting much play in the language-loving community this week. Continue reading...
Two Vocabulary Lists honor the life and work of South African novelist and activist and 1991 Nobel Peace Prize recipient Nadine Gordimer, who died Sunday at the age of 90. Continue reading...
Lexicon Valley, Slate's podcast for language lovers, has just returned after an extended hiatus. First up is an interview with Columbia University professor John McWhorter about his new book The Language Hoax. Listen to the podcast here, and also check out Mark Peters' review of McWhorter's book here. And stay tuned for news about our own Ben Zimmer joining forces with the Lexicon Valley podcasters! Continue reading...
Long before the advent of air conditioning, ice cream, sherbet, and their frozen cousins provided edible relief for summer heat — if you were rich enough to afford them. Today, these icy treats are democratic and diverse, and their names, both generic and trademarked, tell rich stories about language and history. Here are some of the tastiest. Continue reading...
If Argentina had prevailed against Germany in yesterday's World Cup final, you couldn't really have called it an upset. Germany had dominated during the past weeks of World Cup play, but Argentina had gone in as a strong contender. It was a hard fought game decided by a single goal scored in extra time. Neither an upset nor its opposite. Which brings up an interesting vocabulary question: What would a word for the opposite of an upset be? Do we have one in English? Continue reading...
Last week, a thirteen-year old wrote about shrinking vocabulary for her mother's blog on Palo Alto online, in which she wondered if the existence of new words is to blame for a decrease in the average person's vocabulary. Are words like selfie crowding more worthy vocabulary from our brains? Continue reading...