Vocabulary.com Blog
Articles about Words
My wife recently spotted the following perplexing line on Crabtree & Evelyn's website, advertising their hand soap:
That's right, they're selling soap-free soap. I've heard of a "nothing-burger," but "nothing-soap"? Continue reading...Our gentle cleansing liquid soaps are pH-balanced and soap-free.
Blog Excerpts
The Language of Food
Stanford linguist Dan Jurafsky has launched a fascinating new blog called The Language of Food. So far he's posted meticulous studies of the words entrée, ketchup, and dessert. Check it out here.
Wendalyn Nichols, editor of the Copyediting newsletter, offers useful tips to copy editors and anyone else who prizes clear and orderly writing. Here she illuminates the proper usage of the surprisingly tricky word "regard."
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Word RoutesExploring the pathways of our lexicon
At the End of the Day, What's, You Know, Annoying? Whatever!
It was all over the news yesterday: according to a new poll from the Marist Institute for Public Opinion, whatever is the word that Americans find most annoying. The poll asked respondents which word or phrase bothered them the most, and whatever easily swamped the competition, with 47 percent naming it the most annoying. You know came in at 25 percent, it is what it is at 11 percent, anyway at 7 percent, and at the end of the day at 2 percent. Despite the widespread media attention, we should ask: does this poll really tell us anything useful?
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Blog Excerpts
A Daily Portmanteau
What's a dingenuity? It's "A dinner made from the most random of ingredients." And a Snaab? That's "A snob who is obsessed with his Saab," of course. Read more hilariously inventive blends on A Daily Portmanteau.
A rose by any other name is . . . possibly hex FF E4 E1 or decimal 255 228 225. This month in the Lounge we look at the business and the pleasure of color names in English.
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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 muses on the start of another school year, with an ardor that is far from noncommittal.
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