Vocabulary.com Blog
Articles about Vocabulary
Erin Brenner of Right Touch Editing provides "bite-sized lessons to improve your writing" on her engaging blog The Writing Resource. Here Erin offers a "word story" on cacophony, which she finds to be "a very apt term for the digital world."
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Word RoutesExploring the pathways of our lexicon
"Not to Put Too Fine a Point Upon It": How Dickens Helped Shape the Lexicon
With the 200th birthday of Charles Dickens approaching (get your party hats ready for February 7th!), it's a good time to gauge the enormous impact he had on the English language. By many accounts he was the most widely read author of the Victorian era, and no writer since has held a candle to him in terms of popularity, prolificness, and influence in spreading new forms of the language — both highbrow and lowbrow.
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What happens when nouns turn into verbs, and how can language arts educators use these "verbings" as teachable moments? Fitch O'Connell, a longtime teacher of English as a foreign language, takes a look at this "trending" topic.
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Dept. of Word Lists
Les West Side Misérables
Navigating the parking woes of Manhattan, through a web of words.
Once again award-winning writer and educator Bob Greenman takes us on a journey through words selected from More Words That Make a Difference, a delightful book illustrating word usage with passages from the Atlantic Monthly. Here Bob finds himself navigating the seamy underbelly of Manhattan parking.
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Word RoutesExploring the pathways of our lexicon
"Occupy" Named 2011 Word of the Year
Runners-up included "FOMO" (fear of missing out) and "humblebrag."
As the selection of the American Dialect Society's Word of the Year approached, a certain air of inevitability had begun to surround occupy, the word revitalized by the Occupy protest movement. And sure enough, when the assembled throngs met in Portland, Oregon, where the ADS held its annual meeting in conjunction with the Linguistic Society of America, occupy emerged victorious as the Word of 2011.
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Word RoutesExploring the pathways of our lexicon
Now Presenting: The Nominees for the 2011 Word of the Year
Greetings from Portland, Oregon, where the American Dialect Society is having its annual conference. As chair of the New Words Committee, I had the honor of presiding over the nominating session for the Word of the Year. On Friday evening, winners will be selected from the different categories, and then nominations will be made for the overall category of Word of the Year. What do you think the category winners should be, and what should be crowned the Word of 2011?
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Word CountWriters Talk About Writing
"Did You Mean...?": When Ambiguity Foils Communication
Does "semiannual" mean twice a year or every two years? And other stumpers.
In day-to-day discourse, we don't usually encounter terms that are genuinely problematic. If someone throws something at us that's clearly wrong, like calvary for cavalry, we still get it. If my dialect is "She took a cake to the party," whereas yours is "She brought a cake to the party," I'll still understand you.
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