Vocabulary.com Blog
Articles about Language
Academy Award-winning producer and director Tony Bill has spent years collecting Hollywood argot on the sets of his films. Now he reveals this secret cinematic language in his new book, Movie Speak: How to Talk Like You Belong on a Film Set. Don't know the difference between a goofie and a gaffer? Read on!
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With the deepening of "The Great Recession" (or whatever we end up calling the current crisis), our language continues to reflect the tough economic times. Here is a primer on recession-related terminology that has been circulating in recent months, as we struggle to put the global financial uncertainty into words.
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As the recession worsens, we're all learning far more than we ever wanted to know about the ins and outs of the banking industry, ground zero of the financial meltdown. And we're learning new lingo too: the news these days brings word of good banks, bad banks, zombie banks, and even banksters.
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Some recent cases of American dialect creep raised hackles among readers of a British newspaper; we examine the phenomenon this month in the Lounge.
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The American Dialect Society wants to know what you think the Word of the Decade is. Which word best sums up the years from 2000 to 2009? Read the call for nominations below.
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Today marks the 50th anniversary of the passing of Buddy Holly, who died in a plane crash along with Ritchie Valens and J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson. Rather than glumly mope about "The Day the Music Died," as Don McLean dubbed the tragedy in the well-worn song, "American Pie," I'd prefer to reflect on what a tremendously gifted singer/songwriter Holly was. He had a beautiful touch with the English language (sung in his signature hiccupy style), and in his lyrics he found ways to take familiar words and phrases and innovatively shape them into his own. Here are my brief thoughts on the language of four of his songs.
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Is a picture worth a thousand words? Possibly, but if your job is to assign words to pictures, it would be good if you could reduce that number a bit, and perhaps focus on quality rather than quantity. This month in the Lounge we've been thinking about the relationship between words and pictures, while in recovery from a brief addiction to Google Image Labeler.
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