Vocabulary.com Blog
Articles about Words
Have you encountered a transition counselor lately? I hope not. In the real world, a transition counselor is a diabolical euphemism for a profession made famous by George Clooney's character in Up in the Air: someone who fires people for a living. But in Matt Kindt's extraordinary conspiracy thriller Mind MGMT, the term has an even darker sense: assassin.
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I live in the heart of a small lexical explosion—Boulder, Colorado, home to about 100,000 people (of whom 30,000 are university students), and about two dozen retail marijuana dispensaries. The lexical explosion is in the marketing vocabulary of a product that until recently, despite its being universally known and widely used, was contraband.
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Word RoutesExploring the pathways of our lexicon
The Story of "Boondoggle": A Useful Word for Useless Work
From Boy Scout craft to symbol of "Roosevelt the Waster."
For the Slate podcast Lexicon Valley, I explored the peculiar origins of the word boondoggle, which took a strange trip from the world of Boy Scouts to the world of politics 80 years ago.
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On Minnesota Public Radio, our executive editor Ben Zimmer explored the problematic history of the word refugee, now frequently heard in media accounts of the European migration crisis.
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Blog Excerpts
Celebrating Labor (and Labour) Day
On the first Monday in September, the United States observes Labor Day, while Canadians celebrate Labour Day. If you want to know why labour is the accepted spelling in the United Kingdom and Commonwealth countries like Canada, while Americans prefer labor (and color, favor, honor, humor, and neighbor), check out this classic Word Routes column by Ben Zimmer.
Topics:
Words
Word RoutesExploring the pathways of our lexicon
The Colorful Origin Stories of "Gringo"
While folklore abounds, the word's true etymology is equally enticing.
For the Slate podcast Lexicon Valley, I delve into the many stories surrounding the origins of the word gringo, an epithet used by Latin Americans for foreign speakers, typically American Anglophones. Though a great deal of vivid folklore surrounds the word, its actual etymology is just as interesting.
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Dept. of Word Lists
Our Word's-Eye View of the First GOP Debate
Corpus-based analysis highlights the candidates' most relevant words
In a rapid-response survey of candidates' vocabulary in the first GOP debate, broadcast last night on Fox News, Vocabulary.com analyzed the transcript to identify each candidate's most relevant vocabulary word. And the data-driven approach yielded some interesting results about the candidates' language use.
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