Vocabulary.com Blog
Articles about Language
As Americans celebrate Columbus Day, it's worth reflecting on the complicated cultural and linguistic legacy that Christopher Columbus left behind. There's a single word that aptly illustrates this legacy and all of its contradictions: Indians, the mistaken name that Columbus gave to the native peoples of the Americas.
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The Chicago Manual of Style Online has a monthly Q&A called Shop Talk, and this month Ben Zimmer, executive producer of the Visual Thesaurus and Vocabulary.com, is featured. In the interview, Ben talks about the way that technology is shaping language and how sites like the Visual Thesaurus and Vocabulary.com can engage with "digital natives."
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Just as a biologist can tell a critter from a creepy-crawly by the number of legs, euphemism enthusiasts can tell a 5-alarm, major-league, restaurant-quality euphemism by the presence of three words. Readers of previous columns may remember terms such as employee dialogue session, strategic dynamism effort, enhanced pension offer, life problem issue, taco meat filling, and customer pain point. Every time, three words = three metric tons of malarkey.
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How speakers introduce additions to the language that then gain circulation is difficult to document: even today in the Internet age, tracing the origins of linguistic innovation is a sleuth's game and it's a subject that intrigues linguists. Now researchers are trying to bring more light to the process by which people create, learn and use new words.
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Blog Excerpts
Serve up Some "Argle-Bargle" for Talk Like a Pirate Day
Then Check out our arrrr-senal of piratical words
Avast! Ahoy! Bring it on, mateys! Did you know that September 19th is International Talk Like a Pirate Day? Arrrr, it's true! Lately, it seems that everyone is trying to sound piratical.
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Some punctuation marks hog the spotlight, like the versatile, omnipresent comma and the flirty, oft-abused semicolon. Question marks and exclamation marks — the good cop, bad cop of punctuation — are forever in your face. The period subtly but emphatically makes its presence known, while parentheses are off gossiping and tittering like teenage girls. These are the usual suspects most people think of when it comes to punctuation.
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For language lovers, Slate's Lexicon Valley podcast has been required listening for the past year and a half. Now Lexicon Valley has announced that in addition to the podcast, it is also launching a language blog on Slate. The blog cross-publishes posts from contributors to Language Log, including our own Ben Zimmer.
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