Vocabulary.com Blog
Articles about Words
Evasive ManeuversEuphemisms old and new
Customers of Size? More Like Terms of Twaddle
A new batch of goodies from euphemism-meister Mark Peters.
White House security has been one of the most reliable sources of comedy for the past several years, with scandal and buffoonery becoming the norm. Finally, the buffoonery has produced something I can use in endless search for tasty euphemisms.
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Word RoutesExploring the pathways of our lexicon
If It's "All Greek To You," Blame Monks And Shakespeare
The news coming out of Greece these days can be downright perplexing, leading many in the news media to recycle the old phrase, "It's all Greek to me." I talked to NPR's Weekend All Things Considered about the origin of the expression.
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I've just finished reading Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility—not for the first time, probably for the fourth or fifth time. I started reading her when I was a teenager and I try to re-read one of her novels every year. They never disappoint, and at each stage of my life, I find new facets to explore in her analysis of human nature and relations, and in her unparalleled mastery of the expressiveness of English.
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Happy Fourth! It's time for fireworks, picnics, swimming excursions, ice cream cones...and word learning!
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Word RoutesExploring the pathways of our lexicon
Where Does "Bozo" Come From? Let's Not Clown Around!
For my latest appearance on the Slate podcast Lexicon Valley, I take a look at the clownish roots of the word bozo. While the image of TV's Bozo the Clown is familiar to many generations of American youth, how did Bozo get his name in the first place? The answer may lie in vaudeville.
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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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Did that headline peak your interest? Or did it pique it? I'm waiting with baited breath for your answer. Or would that be bated? All of us have a tendency to replace a fossilized word, whose nuances have been lost, with a more standard definition of that word or a different word entirely. Through this process, phrases, like words, can change meaning over time.
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