Vocabulary.com Blog
Articles about Linguistics
Today is Veterans Day in the United States, and linguist Neal Whitman has been thinking about a question of military usage: if "50,000 troops" refers to 50,000 people, then does "one troop" refer to one person?
Continue reading...
Blog Excerpts
More on "Text(ed)"
Wendalyn Nichols, editor of the Copyediting newsletter, offers useful tips to copy editors and anyone else who prizes clear and orderly writing. Here she tackles the question, "Why do we say a baseball player 'flied out,' not 'flew out'?"
Continue reading...
Just in time for the beginning of the school year, linguist Neal Whitman investigates how "back to school" got transformed from a prepositional phrase to a noun phrase.
It's time for back to school! With Labor Day just around the corner, back to school is days away for many students across the nation, and for many others it has already come. Continue reading...
In his new book, Slang: The People's Poetry, Indiana University English professor Michael Adams tackles the tough question: what is the nature of slang? Adams, also the author of Slayer Slang: A Buffy the Vampire Slayer Lexicon, looks beyond dictionary definitions of slang to examine the fascinating interplay of social and aesthetic qualities in "the poetry of everyday speech." In this first of a two-part interview, Adams explains how the linguistic practice of slang balances the social and the aesthetic, and considers what directions slang might take in the future.
Continue reading...
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.
Continue reading...
In this anniversary edition of Language Lounge we return to the topic that started it all — sound symbolism — in our quest to learn the true meaning of /oi/.
Continue reading...
Sign up now (it’s free!)
Whether you’re a teacher or a learner,
Vocabulary.com can put you or your class
on the path to systematic vocabulary improvement.