Vocabulary.com Blog
Articles about Fun
In a mere two weeks, New York Knicks point guard Jeremy Lin has gone from an unknown to the most compelling story in sports. For basketball commentators, he's been the gift that keeps on giving: turning in amazing performances night after night since coming off the bench and propelling the Knicks to a seven-game winning streak. His humble personal profile is in stark contrast to the over-the-top enthusiasm his play has generated, which goes by the buzzword (perhaps you've heard?) Linsanity.
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Word RoutesExploring the pathways of our lexicon
"Downton Abbey": Tracking the Anachronisms
Does the show get the language of the era right?
Are you hooked on "Downton Abbey"? The second season of the British period drama has been airing in the U.S. on PBS, and it's been an addictive treat for Anglophiles. But just how accurate is the language used on the show? Though it mostly remains true to its post-Edwardian setting, at times the talk is a bit anachronistic.
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Dog EaredBooks we love
"From Elvish to Klingon": An Impressive Overview of Conlang-ology
A new book explores the fascinating world of constructed languages.
When word nerdom and sci-fi nerdom collide, what do you get? A dictionary-bot that recites definitions while performing the duties of a butler? Someday, I hope that's true. For now, the answer is From Elvish to Klingon: Exploring Invented Languages: a thorough look at invented languages (also known as conlangs, short for constructed languages) from sci-fi and elsewhere.
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The Terms of Christmas, Present
Christmas classics have injected many words and phrases into the language.
My wife and I were out Christmas shopping last week and came home with an armload of classic holiday DVDs that we somehow didn't already own. She'd gathered up every title you probably know, and we spent a couple of evenings watching our way through the pile. During this latter-day review of the holiday favorites of our childhood, it struck me that there were a surprising number of terms and phrases that had become familiar either directly from these Christmas classics or from their sources.
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Word RoutesExploring the pathways of our lexicon
David Henry Hwang Traverses the Language Barrier in "Chinglish"
A new Broadway comedy finds humor in the dangers of mistranslation.
A new play is opening tonight on Broadway, and it's a treat for language lovers. It's called "Chinglish," and it was written by David Henry Hwang, who won a Tony Award for "M. Butterfly." I had a chance to talk to Hwang about his comic exploration of the perils of cross-linguistic misunderstanding.
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Word RoutesExploring the pathways of our lexicon
Now Pitching in the World Series: The Man They Call "Scrabble"
Marc Rzepczynski is the latest baseball player with a Scrabble-friendly name.
In this year's World Series, one name in particular will likely catch the eye of even casual baseball fans. In the late innings of the first two games, a relief pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals came in to face the Texas Rangers: Marc Rzepczynski. The announcers were clearly ready for Rzepczynski's appearance and pronounced his name smoothly (as "zep-CHIN-ski"), helpfully explaining that his nickname is "Scrabble." So how does Rzepczynski stack up against other hard-to-spell baseball names?
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Word RoutesExploring the pathways of our lexicon
The Art of the Self-Mocking Hashtag
How the Twitter hashtag became a vehicle for self-deprecation.
It's fair to say that when it comes to online discourse we live in the Golden Age of Snark. (That's snark as in "snide commentary," not the imaginary animal of Lewis Carroll's nonsense poem "The Hunting of the Snark.") When every statement you make is open to sarcastic rebuttals, sometimes the best policy is to ridicule yourself before someone else has the chance. Nowhere is this more true than Twitter, where the convention of the "hashtag" has been pressed into the service of self-mockery.
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