Vocabulary.com Blog
Articles about Politics
Blog Excerpts
Know Your Shutdown Buzzwords
"Furlough." "Brinkmanship." "Shutdown." "Slimdown." The political stalemate on Capitol Hill about the federal budget and the Affordable Care Act has generated its own lexicon. Katy Steinmetz has compiled a helpful guide to shutdown buzzwords for TIME's Swampland blog — check it out here.
Word RoutesExploring the pathways of our lexicon
"Septaper" and "Octaper": Fed-Watchers Remake the Calendar
Last week, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke foiled the predictions of many analysts that September would usher in tapering, or the gradual slowdown of the bond-buying policy that the Fed instituted to keep long-term interest rates low. Those analysts even had renamed the month Septaper, but now they're looking ahead to a possible Octaper. After that, it gets a bit harder to come up with clever month-blends.
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In 1913, the National Press Club hosted a spelling bee that pitted members of Congress against members of the press. This week, the club celebrated the centennial of that event by bringing lawmakers and journalists together once again for a spelling battle, and Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia emerged as the victor.
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Word RoutesExploring the pathways of our lexicon
Of Pinpricks and Slam-Dunks: The Rhetoric of the Syrian Conflict
The situation in Syria has revived a number of well-worn foreign-policy phrases, from "boots on the ground" to "slam-dunks" and "smoking guns." As the American response to the conflict has involved far more in the way of words than deeds, it's worth taking a closer look at the words used by officials and commentators, no matter how hackneyed.
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Blog Excerpts
Upheaval in Egypt: Is It a "Coup"?
Semantics meets foreign policy with some serious diplomatic implications.
Since the overthrow of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, U.S. government officials have been wrestling with a question of semantics: should Morsi's removal be called a coup? The answer to the question has serious foreign-policy implications.
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Last December I commemorated the two hundredth anniversary of what was then the first-known appearance of "Uncle Sam" as a personification of the United States, which turned up in a Bennington, Vermont newspaper. Now, just in time for the Fourth of July, comes new evidence that "Uncle Sam" was in use as early as 1810, more than two years before the phrase's popularization in the War of 1812.
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Behind the DictionaryLexicographers Talk About Language
The Highest Dictionary in the Land? The Supreme Court and Definitions
Judges, like the rest of us, turn to dictionaries when they're not sure about the meaning of a word. Or they turn to dictionaries when they're sure about a word's meaning, but they need some confirmation. Or they turn to a dictionary that defines a word the way they want it defined, rejecting as irrelevant, inadmissible, and immaterial any definitions they don't like.
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