Vocabulary.com Blog
Articles about Language
Sometimes our perspective on language isn't exactly rational: we love some words and absolutely despise other ones. What inspires such deep feelings, and why does word hate often seem to run hotter than word love? In the case of words like impactful, discussed in yesterday's Red Pen Diaries, the bad vibes may arise because of an association with vacuous management-speak or other institutional jargon. But other times a word is disliked because it just sounds, well, icky. A look at some of the favorite and least favorite words selected by Visual Thesaurus subscribers offers some insight on verbal attractions and aversions.
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Blog Excerpts
Reshaping the Environmental Lexicon
"Cap and trade" or "pollution reduction refund"? "Global warming" or "our deteriorating atmosphere"? Environmental action groups are proposing new messaging techniques to build public support for their causes. The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times provide two different angles to this developing story.
Have you browsed through a dictionary (the kind printed on paper) lately? If you have, the publishers of it are probably glad you did, while being aware that you may be part of a dying breed. This month the Lounge is the first of a two-parter examining some implications of dictionary-making in the digital age.
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Blog Excerpts
A Million Words? Not So Fast...
Visual Thesaurus editor Ben Zimmer explains to Washington Post Book World why the claim that English is adding its millionth word lacks credibility.
Forbes.com is running a special report on neologisms — all about how and why new words enter the language. And the Visual Thesaurus family is well-represented, with featured articles by editor Ben Zimmer and contributor Mark Peters.
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Behind the DictionaryLexicographers Talk About Language
April 15th: A Most Taxing Day for Dictionaries
While most of us view April 15th as the day the tax man cometh (and our income goeth), it marked a more auspicious occasion in 1755. That was the day Samuel Johnson published his massive two-volume, 42,773-word dictionary of the English language. Mim Harrison, founding editor of Levenger Press, takes a look back.
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This month in the Lounge we examine the implications of a silent but deadly usurpation of the language of the People, brought to light by an intellectual property court case.
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