Vocabulary.com Blog
Articles about Vocabulary
The Supreme Court has issued a decision on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, and as significant as that may be, as vocabularians, we can't get past the sighting of jiggery-pokery in Justice Antonin Scalia's dissenting opinion.
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Behind the DictionaryLexicographers Talk About Language
Call it "Balmy" or "Sweltering," Summer (and Summer Words) are Here
Sunday is the longest day of the year and the official start to summer. To get ready, we're taking a look at the words and terms enshrined in our language that capture our collective experience of the summer season — trotted out once again like the shorts and sandals we've been waiting all winter to wear again.
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Tasty MorselsGood stuff from Vocabulary.com
What Got Midlothian Middle to a 2nd Place Vocab Bowl Finish?
Fun Contests and School-Wide Displays
How did a small middle school in Virginia earn a third place national finish in the 2014-2015 Vocab Bowl? One teacher's creative contest-making gave kids min-goals to aim for all year long.
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Vocabulary Shout-Out
Great Movie Title. But Do We Know What "Insidious" Means?
It certainly sounds terrifying.
In the last year, Hollywood has brought a whole lot of vocabulary learning to the silver screen, from the minions of Despicable Me 2 fame, to a host of mal- words brought to mind by Maleficent , and the vocabulary-heavy Divergent/Insurgent franchise. This weekend, those of us who go to movies hoping to get scared out of our seats are offered Insidious: Chapter 3.
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On the latest episode of the Slate podcast Lexicon Valley, I take a look at a classic Yiddishism: kibitz, which can mean "make unwanted comments (as a spectator at a card game)," or something more general like "chitchat." While it's a word with a rich history, its origins are ultimately mysterious.
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Announcements
Students Abandon "Call of Duty" for Vocab Learning
A Pulitzer Prize-Winning Journalist Uncovers Why
Writing in Sunday's Houston Chronicle, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Lisa Falkenberg shone a spotlight on the hundreds of Houston students who got hooked on Vocabulary.com, as one "campus-wide obsession" turned into a recipe for academic success.
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Following the enormously successful release of Avengers: Age of Ultron, Slate's words correspondent Katy Waldman raised a question, "Why are they called the Avengers? What are they avenging?" This put us in mind of lexicographer Neal Whitman's observation a few years back that, at least in movies, "Avenging and vengeance are for good guys, while revenge is for the bad guys."
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