Following today's release of the teen horror pic Ouija, we're taking another look at our blurb for the word. Turns out, it's less about the occult and more about "getting to 'yes.'"Continue reading...
Teachers and parents may drive themselves crazy with the thought that vocabulary learning among today's children is "not what it used to be." But one primary source document suggests that children a century ago found long words to be just as intimidating as they do now.Continue reading...
When Academy Award-winning screenwriter Robert Pirosh was first looking for a job at a Hollywood studio in 1934, he penned the following vocabulary-rich missive, which we found featured on the blog and book, Letters of Note.Continue reading...
Recently a math teacher and Facebook friend of Vocabulary.com posted to her Facebook page: Would you rather take a "quiz," "diagnostic," "test," or "evaluation?" Responses to the post were clear. Everyone would rather take a quiz. A quick look at the blurbs for these words on the Vocabulary.com website explains why.Continue reading...
In a review for the New York Times Sunday Book Review of Karen Joy Fowler's "readably juicy and surreptitiously smart" We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, Barbara Kingsolver describes the novel as "a story of Everyfamily in which loss engraves relationships, truth is a soulful stalker and coming-of-age means facing down the mirror, recognizing the shape-shifting notion of self." She might have added that it is an excellent read for anyone interested in words.Continue reading...
In a piece for Politico, former member of the U.S. House of Representatives Steve LaTourette cited the Vocabulary.com blurb for grifter when he used that term to describe an arm of the Republican party. Politics aside, grifter is a great word and we're glad to see it getting some play.Continue reading...
It's always interesting to learn about a word whose connotation has changed over time, especially when the change was radical. This is the story of innovation, and it turns out it's also the story of disruption, innovation's frequent pair. So what's next?Continue reading...